0:01

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History

0:03

Class from works dot Com.

0:11

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly

0:13

Fry and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. And

0:16

today's episode is going to be a little bit of

0:18

a springtime macab It's

0:20

got all the classics, You've got some unidentified

0:22

corpses which are exhibiting strange characteristics.

0:25

There's a little bit of science in there, some

0:28

modern issues associated with this science.

0:31

And we're even gonna have a cameo from a famed

0:33

paleontologist. And we're actually

0:35

titling the episode The Lady Who Turned to Soap,

0:38

But we're actually going to talk about a few different

0:40

corpses that have been found covered

0:42

in some degree of a substance which is sometimes

0:45

called grave wax. This

0:48

story, as we're telling it today, starts in

0:50

eighteen seventy five, and at

0:52

that point, a city improvement project in Philadelphia

0:55

unearthed a unique find. Uh.

0:57

This project involved the ex

1:00

nation of a cemetery, and it

1:02

was a thing that they had to do in order to get the project

1:04

done. Yeah, and I've read different

1:06

accounts of what that project may have been. Some

1:08

say they were trying to build a train platform and it

1:10

was gonna take up some of

1:12

they needed some of the space that the cemetery occupied,

1:15

and others are like no, it was a widening of streets.

1:17

So I don't have a concrete definitive

1:19

on what the public works project was, but

1:22

two of the bodies that were exhumed

1:24

as they were trying to move this portion of the cemetery

1:28

exhibited this really distinctive characteristic.

1:31

They had turned to a substance that

1:33

appeared very much like soap. A

1:35

professor of anatomy at the University

1:37

of Pennsylvania named Joseph Lady was

1:40

very excited about this discovery and

1:42

he shared this news with his friend and

1:44

colleague, William Hunt. In

1:48

Hunt wrote an article for the Public

1:50

Ledger which described ladies

1:52

intense enthusiasm over

1:54

this specimen, and according

1:56

to Hunt, Lady told him quote,

1:59

they have been very for nearly a hundred years,

2:02

nobody claims them, and they would

2:04

be rare and instructive additions to

2:06

our collections. Hunt's

2:08

account described his visit with Lady to

2:10

the cemetery to speak to a superintendent

2:13

in the hopes of acquiring the bodies

2:15

for the College of Medicine. After

2:17

making a number of comments about the violation

2:20

of the grave and appearing to shut this

2:22

mission mission down. The cemetery superintendent

2:25

finally told the duo quote, I tell

2:27

you what I do. I give the bodies up

2:29

to the order of relatives. And

2:32

so the pair left the

2:34

cemetery, and lady had taken the superintendent's

2:38

comment as a hint, and so he went

2:40

out and he hired a furniture wagon, and

2:42

he sent a driver with the furniture wagon

2:44

with a note that the bodies were the

2:46

grandparents of the wagon driver's employer,

2:49

and asked that they be released to the

2:51

driver. And so that same cemetery

2:53

worker, who had dropped this hint to lady

2:55

that relatives could collect bodies, sent

2:58

the deceased on their way in the furniture

3:00

wagon. Documents

3:03

in the Mooder Museum indicate that lady

3:05

paid seven dollars and fifty cents for

3:07

each of these bodies. The Mooder

3:09

Museum, which is part of the College of Medicine,

3:12

kept the soap lady, but the soapman

3:14

eventually went to the Smithsonian Institution

3:17

as part of the National Museum of Natural

3:19

History. And

3:21

now, just to acknowledge

3:23

his cameo, you may recognize the name

3:25

Lady, so Dr Joseph Lady

3:28

is usually referred to as the father of American

3:30

vertebrate paleontology,

3:32

and in the Cope and Marsh bone wars, which

3:34

are covered by previous hosts of this podcast.

3:37

In an episode UH, it was actually

3:39

Lady who backed up Marsh in his assertion

3:41

that Cope had placed the head of Elasmosaurus

3:45

plat urus on the wrong end

3:47

of the skeleton. This was a particularly

3:49

painful episode because Lady

3:51

had actually been Cope's mentor,

3:53

so for him to be the one that actually validated

3:56

criticism of him was quite

3:58

a drama. But it's just in case you're

4:00

recognizing that name and it's ringing a bell, that

4:03

was who he was. So you may at

4:05

this point, in addition to stumbling

4:07

over the ethics of effectively

4:09

stealing these bodies, wondering

4:12

how in the world does the body turn

4:14

into soap? And these two

4:16

soap bodies are definitely not the only specimens

4:19

to exhibit this very weird waxy

4:21

transformation. In Paris in the

4:23

late seventeen hundreds bodies of children

4:25

were exhumed from the Cemetery of Innocence

4:27

to be moved into a space that would later

4:30

become the Paris Catacombs. And

4:32

this is sort of the first point on record

4:34

where we have people noting this condition.

4:38

UH. Scientists Antoine for Quax

4:40

and Michel Tore were on hand to study

4:42

those bodies during the exhamation. UH.

4:45

They were there because they had an opportunity

4:47

to study decomposition, and they noticed

4:49

that several of them were covered

4:51

in a waxy substance. And this

4:54

pair is actually credited with naming this substance

4:56

at a puss fair and that comes from the Latin

4:58

root words adepts or you'll

5:00

hear adipose for fat and sarah,

5:03

which is wax adipus.

5:05

There forms a part of decomposition,

5:08

but it doesn't typically happen.

5:10

Most bodies don't do this at all. It

5:13

requires specific conditions, usually

5:15

a moist alkaline environment, and

5:18

as the decomposition progresses,

5:20

the body's fat slowly turns

5:22

into this soap like substance. The

5:25

corpse wax is sometimes

5:27

called starts off soft, kind

5:29

of like a paste or a petty, but it

5:31

hardens over time into something more like hard

5:33

wax or damp mortar. And

5:36

this process is called supontification,

5:39

and it actually stops the decay process

5:41

is It slowly encases the body with wax

5:44

and shuts out the oxygen that's needed for

5:46

normal decomposition. It

5:48

happens most successfully when a corpse's

5:51

body fat is exposed to anaerobic bacteria.

5:54

It can happen in damp soil or water, so

5:56

long as the environment is low on oxygen.

5:59

One are the really fascinating things about suppontification

6:02

is that it can happen pretty rapidly in terms

6:04

of a body. It's been documented

6:06

in observed research settings is happening

6:09

even within a few days, although it can

6:11

stretch into more than a year. In

6:13

some testing that was done with pig davers,

6:15

the process actually started within hours.

6:19

Warm water seems to hasten the process,

6:21

and while it does continue in cold water,

6:24

it just does so at a slower pace. For

6:26

a body to be completely transformed

6:29

by the process rather than just the fatty

6:31

tissues takes about two years, and

6:34

in some cases adoposs air formation

6:37

has been found in dry environments,

6:39

but that definitely appears to be the exception

6:41

rather than the rule. And then those

6:44

cases it's the moisture of the body

6:46

itself that kind of provides the ideal conditions

6:48

for these anaerobic bacteria,

6:51

and it's been documented in bodies that have been embalmed

6:53

as well as those that have not. UH.

6:56

It is most common in cases of people with

6:58

high body fat, which sort of makes sense UH,

7:00

and within a given corpse, it

7:03

tends to form. Again, this is pretty

7:05

logical, most commonly in areas

7:07

where the body fat is concentrated. So if

7:09

someone carries a lot of their body fat in their abdomen,

7:12

that's where it's going to be versus if someone carries

7:14

it in their hips, that's where it will really

7:17

start forming in the largest

7:19

proportion. One of the major

7:21

problems of adipos there is that it

7:23

preserves bodies and slows normal

7:25

decomposition, which makes it hard to determine

7:28

just how long the corpse has been dead.

7:31

And because it tends to persist once it's

7:33

formed, the adapas there can just preserve

7:35

a cadaver almost indefinitely. And

7:39

in the case of soap Lady and her companion

7:41

Soapman, although it does not appear that they were actual

7:44

companions, just that they were found in the same graveyard,

7:47

their caskets had allowed water to seep

7:49

in and sort of work its way in and provide

7:51

the perfect environment for this process to

7:53

take place, and as we just

7:55

mentioned, this also made it really tricky

7:57

for researchers to identify when each

7:59

of them had passed before we kind

8:01

of get into some of the research

8:04

and study that's been done there. Do you want to pause

8:06

for a brief word from a sponsor, Let's do

8:08

that. So the early story

8:10

on Soap Lady was that she had been an elderly

8:13

uh potentially obese woman who had

8:15

died in sevent from yellow fever.

8:17

There was a big

8:19

outbreak of yellow fever in the area during

8:21

that year. The story persisted actually

8:24

for a long time until around the nineteen

8:26

eighties, and at that point a team of researchers,

8:28

which included Gerald J. Conlogue,

8:31

who was a radiographer at the time. He

8:33

is now a professor of diagnostic Imaging

8:35

at UH Canipiac University

8:38

and his two student assistants came and they

8:40

did some interesting study of the body.

8:43

They took X rays and that

8:45

really changed the Soap Ladies story

8:47

significantly. The images revealed

8:50

that she was definitely not elderly when she died,

8:52

she was younger than forty UH

8:54

and they were also able to determine

8:56

that she had been in fact a solid, diminutive

8:58

woman. She was short. Her skeleton,

9:00

though appeared healthy uh and it did appear

9:03

that she had a kidney stone or a gall stone because

9:05

they noticed some calcification points

9:07

in the abdomen. Additionally,

9:09

they discovered a number of straight pins and

9:12

two copper alloy buttons on her

9:14

body. These discoveries really

9:16

shifted the time of her death much later.

9:19

Two have the straight pins which were found at her

9:21

head were believed to have held

9:23

a chin strap so that her mouth didn't

9:25

droop open before she was buried, and

9:29

several other straight pins were found lower

9:31

on her body and they're believed to have held a shroud

9:33

in place. And these pins

9:35

that the team found were the same as those that were manufactured

9:38

in England in the eighteen twenties. I

9:40

also read that they started being manufactured

9:43

in the US in the eighteen thirties, so

9:45

Soap Lady could not have died in the seventeen

9:47

hundreds at this point. Her cause

9:50

of death, however, remains a mystery.

9:52

The two buttons were also a type

9:54

that was commonly used in the eighteen hundreds,

9:57

and they were positioned in such a way that they were probably

9:59

closing the sleeves on her clothing at

10:01

the wrist. These pieces

10:03

of evidence really helped the researchers

10:06

estimate her death as being sometime in the eighteen

10:08

thirties and then uh

10:10

in two thousand eight, so fairly recently, the Mooder

10:12

Museum hosted forensic experts

10:14

and radiographers to study the Soap Lady

10:17

once again, and in fact, that original

10:19

team that had studied her in the eighties came back and

10:21

were part of this. So at this point

10:23

she was removed from her plexiglass display

10:25

and casement and she was examined. I

10:28

read one newspaper report that said she's getting

10:30

her physical like they said it kind of glibly. X

10:33

rays were carefully taken, they did like polaroid

10:36

X rays, and they assembled them right there on the spot

10:38

so that researchers could look at her skeleton

10:40

and its entirety next to the actual

10:43

body. They also took digital

10:45

X rays for later development, and they

10:47

removed some hair so they could perform toxicology

10:50

tests. And

10:52

analysis of the work that was done

10:54

with Soap Lady in the two thousands has led

10:56

to the conclusion that she may have been even

10:58

younger than was previously s aimated she

11:00

could have even been as young as in her twenties.

11:03

They're guessing late twenties, but she's still

11:05

Oh. We don't have all the details on her story.

11:07

We're still figuring it out. So

11:10

Man has also been studied by scientists

11:12

at his home in the Smithsonian collection

11:14

since he was acquired in nineteen fifty eight.

11:17

It's believed that he was in his forties when

11:19

he died, which is estimated to have been sometime

11:21

between eighteen hundred and eighteen ten, and

11:25

Soap Man is about five foot nine. He's

11:27

still wearing his stockings, which always seems

11:29

to come up in descriptions of him, which is kind of charming.

11:32

Uh and much like Soap Lady. He was originally

11:34

believed to have been buried in the seventeen hundreds,

11:37

and they similarly had some confusion

11:39

about his age gu estimate. It

11:42

was estimated that he was about sixty three at

11:44

that point, prior to the additional

11:47

research that put him more in his forties,

11:49

and while he may have died of yellow fever, they're

11:52

not positive. They do not think it happened

11:54

during the sevent epidemic that they

11:56

had attributed both of their deaths

11:58

to. Initially, Uh

12:00

now we're going to move on to some other similar

12:04

bodies. In a

12:06

soap mummy was found decapitated

12:09

and fully covered by adapas air, and

12:11

this was floating in Lake Brian's in

12:13

Switzerland. The body was nicknamed

12:15

brand Z and it was really a mystery

12:18

for fifteen years. While some of the body

12:20

had decomposed, most of the trunk

12:22

was sealed up in adipas air, and consequently

12:24

the soft tissues of his heart, stomach,

12:27

and intestinal tract were all really well preserved,

12:30

and in eleven researchers

12:32

from the University of Zurich finally determined,

12:35

based on algae findings in his

12:37

bone marrow, that Brands had drowned

12:40

in the lake in the seventeen hundreds and that

12:42

he had slowly turned to soap after

12:44

he settled into sort of a sediment grave

12:46

on the bottom of this body of water, and

12:49

he just sat there quietly. You know, the sediment

12:51

had compacted so much that oxygen

12:53

wasn't getting in. But an earthquake

12:55

eventually dislodged him from the lake bed,

12:57

and that is how he came to the surface

12:59

where he was discovered in

13:02

nine forty A pretty grisly

13:04

suppontification discovery was made in Washington

13:07

State, an Olympic National Park.

13:09

A woman's body was found on Lake Crescent,

13:12

and in this case, the body had clearly

13:14

been dumped. The woman had been rolled

13:16

up in blankets and then tied with a rope,

13:19

and her face had decomposed to the point that it

13:22

couldn't be identified, but the rest of her body

13:24

had turned to this waxy substance,

13:27

and a medical student that had examined

13:29

the body once it was taken to Port Angelus

13:31

had described it as being very similar

13:34

to ivory soap. The body was

13:36

eventually ideate as Hallie Illingworth,

13:38

who had gone missing three years earlier, and

13:40

ultimately Hallie's husband, Monty Illingworth,

13:43

was found guilty of her murder. Yeah,

13:46

And that one's kind of interesting because it does point out

13:49

sort of uh. I

13:51

know, when I started researching this, I

13:53

was thinking, this must be a process that takes a really

13:55

long time. But she had vanished

13:57

in seven and was found just three

14:00

is later completely encased. So uh.

14:03

In addition to the scientific research

14:05

done, that's kind of an easy case study

14:08

that shows, you know, in natural non lab

14:10

conditions, three years can completely

14:12

in case the whole whole corps. Uh.

14:15

In the body of a young

14:17

boy was found in a sarcophagus from

14:19

the late Roman era in the city of Man's,

14:21

Germany, and this had a coding

14:24

of what scientists have described as quote

14:26

a puff pastry like substance assumed

14:28

to be adapas air. And this

14:30

particular cadaver is unique in that it was

14:32

in an area with fluctuating groundwater

14:34

levels. So this means that in some periods

14:36

of time conditions were conducive to adipos

14:39

air development, and in other periods

14:41

of time, Uh, they

14:43

were not, and they enabled the boy's corpse to actually

14:45

decay. But scientists point

14:47

to this find as significant because even with

14:49

these fluctuating environmental factors,

14:52

the adipos air has persisted for

14:54

roughly sixteen hundred years. Before

14:58

we get to a very modern problem,

15:01

uh about adapass air. You

15:03

want to pause and have a word from a sponsor. Let's

15:06

do that. So I mentioned

15:08

this before our sponsor break that there are many, many

15:10

instances of adapasser appearing on corpses.

15:12

Some are famous, some are not. But

15:15

it is a very modern issue and it's

15:17

actually causing a very real problem

15:20

in Germany. Some cemeteries actually

15:23

recycle their space but adapass

15:25

their formation is creating a real challenge

15:27

when it comes to that practice. Normally,

15:30

plots and cemeteries that practice recycling

15:33

are exhumed for reuse after

15:35

fifteen to twenty five years, long

15:37

enough in good conditions

15:39

for the full decomposition process

15:41

to have taken place, leaving only skeletal

15:44

remains. In Germany

15:46

isn't the only place that's done this, but there have been a

15:48

lot of studies done around that. So it's

15:50

one of those cultural things where I when

15:53

I have told people about this, they get really weird

15:55

and it's like, well, we have finite space on

15:57

the Earth and seemingly infinite

16:00

people happening, So something

16:02

has to be done to kind of manage this um.

16:04

But because of damp conditions and high clay

16:07

content of many of the burial sites,

16:09

like a lot of these cemeteries were just not placed on

16:11

ideal ground, bodies

16:13

are not decomposing properly, and that means

16:15

that graves can't be recycled, and

16:18

there's sort of this whole research

16:20

effort happening trying to fix this problem.

16:22

Swiss scientists began a project

16:25

in two thousand eight to try to solve the problem by

16:27

introducing a reconditioning system into

16:29

the soil. But the problematic

16:31

element to that solution is that there

16:34

has to be a place where they can create

16:36

auxiliary graves to be dug for

16:38

these corpses that are covered with adapas are

16:40

like they can't They can recondition the soil, but they

16:43

still have to put these bodies somewhere. Some

16:46

cities opted instead to purchase

16:48

water tight burial chambers, and in some

16:50

cases private citizens have purchased

16:52

their own. These tombs offer up

16:55

environments where decomposition can happen the

16:57

way it normally should, without the conditions

16:59

that provoked that promote the development of

17:01

adapastair. However, and

17:03

an initial examination of some of

17:05

these chambers actually revealed

17:08

a different problem. The absolute

17:10

absence of moisture has led to corpse is mommifying

17:13

rather than decomposing, So filters

17:15

have been added to some of the crypt models in the hope

17:17

of creating a more perfect afterlife

17:19

environment to promote proper decay.

17:22

Another solution that is also

17:25

a Swiss brainchild is a fungal product

17:27

that is intended to accelerate decomposition

17:30

of wooden coffins. And i UH

17:33

read about this in an article in Spiegel online.

17:35

And this was in two thousand and eight, and I did not really

17:37

find later information

17:39

on how successful that is or is

17:42

not, So we don't really know if

17:44

that's worked yet. It's still only,

17:46

you know, seven years after the fact. It

17:48

may be hard to tell. Um. Other approaches

17:51

to kind of advancing the science

17:53

of decomposing bodies are being

17:55

explored. Uh. There are companies

17:58

cropping up that offer woodland bury like

18:00

under a tree, or their luxury

18:03

cemeteries that are designed to feel more like park

18:05

spaces. And in those cases, at

18:08

least the ones that I read about in Germany,

18:11

there is an option to have a not recycled

18:13

grave so that if the family wishes,

18:16

they can keep you in that plot forever. I think they

18:18

have to pay like an annual fee.

18:20

I'm not entirely clear on the economics of

18:22

it, but it's an option now to

18:24

kind of skip over this whole recycling issue.

18:29

Uh. And and that's soap

18:31

people. It's

18:34

probably fascinating. It is strange

18:36

and fascinating. It is probably no uh

18:39

surprise to people who have

18:42

maybe watched Fight Club or read other things that

18:44

you know, fat and soap are connected. One

18:47

of my friends that I was talking to, So it

18:49

didn't isn't this how they discovered that body

18:51

fat could be used as a cleaning agent? And I was

18:53

like, not this specifically. It's sort

18:55

of like the difference between using

18:58

a wheat based flour to bake a cake that

19:00

cake spontaneously forming in a field of wheat.

19:03

You can you can use fat in

19:05

the soap making process, but for soap

19:07

to just form on its own is a full

19:10

other thing that requires a lot of very

19:12

specific scenarios

19:14

and conditions. Well, and the possibly

19:17

apocryphal story of how

19:19

soap was discovered was people

19:22

doing their laundry downstream

19:24

from a place where bodies were being burned

19:27

for sacrifice, and so correct the

19:29

ash and the the fat

19:31

and all of that we're mixing together and flowing into

19:33

the water. It's possibly apocryphal,

19:36

but more believable

19:38

than it being from adapas

19:40

there. Right, So

19:43

yeah, it's they're they're connected in terms

19:45

of chemistry, but it's not quite the same situation.

19:48

Uh, this completely fascinates

19:50

me. Admittedly I have a

19:53

taste for the macab especially when it involves

19:55

science, but yeah,

19:57

it's very fascinating. This the idea that

19:59

you could turn soap. Uh.

20:02

I also have listener mail has

20:04

nothing to do with dead bodies. Uh.

20:07

It is actually about our carousel episode,

20:09

and it is from our listener, Emmy. She

20:11

says, I'm a longtime listener and lurker, and

20:14

I had to write you as soon as I saw the title of today's

20:16

podcast because I am all about carousels.

20:19

I have actually even been on a velocipede

20:21

carousel as one summer there was an event on

20:23

Governor's Island with a bunch of hundred year old

20:26

French carnival rides. They are indeed

20:28

fun, but do not ride in a short skirt. That

20:30

sounds like an amazing experience. By

20:32

the way, if you want to write us more about that,

20:34

Emmy, feel free to do so. When you mentioned

20:36

the carousel with the civil rights connection, I thought

20:39

of my first. I thought first of my childhood carousel

20:41

in Glen Echo, Maryland. During

20:43

the Civil Rights movement, Glen Echo was still a

20:45

working amusement park and it was closed to black

20:47

people. Students from Howard University

20:50

stage to sit in on the carousel in the summer

20:52

of nineteen sixty, which kicked off a chain

20:54

of events that led to the park's eventual integration

20:56

the following year. But

20:59

this was long before my time, so when I eventually

21:01

learned about it while growing up in the DC area,

21:04

I was astounded that anybody wouldn't be allowed

21:06

to ride the carousel that has always been my favorite

21:08

place in the world. I love

21:10

this. The lead horse

21:12

on the Glennaco carousel, which has a

21:14

black naim and roses around her neck, is

21:17

my horse, Penny. I

21:19

named her when I was eight and now I'm thirty.

21:21

But I still come back every summer to visit,

21:24

and my very patient husband waves to me

21:26

as I ride. Oh, that's so much.

21:28

It's the sweetest thing. So

21:31

um and Emmy thinks she is keeping the

21:33

New York carousel scene in business by buying tickets

21:36

and making friends with wooden horses. I love

21:38

it so much. That's such a sweet story. I have

21:40

a carousel horse that I named at a carousel

21:43

I visit a lot. It is named Kobaud,

21:46

So I fully appreciate that. Emmy. I think it's

21:49

awesome. If you would like to

21:51

write to us and share your carousel horse story

21:53

or anything else, you can do so at History

21:55

Podcast at houseto Works dot com.

21:57

You can visit us at Facebook dot com slash

22:00

minst in history at misst in history.

22:02

On Twitter at miston history dot tumbler

22:04

dot com, on pinterest dot com slash

22:06

missed in history. They're gonna be some good soap

22:09

body pictures going up on Pinterest, and

22:11

you can visit us at miss in history dot

22:13

spreadshirt dot com. If you would like to buy some misst

22:16

in history goodies for yourself or your

22:18

friends and loved ones. Uh. If you would

22:20

like to research a little bit more about what we talked

22:22

about today, you can go to our parents

22:24

site, how stuff Works. Type in the word decomposition

22:27

in the search bar and you will churn up.

22:29

I think it's about third down, usually an

22:31

article called how body farms work. Uh.

22:34

And those are fascinating places where bodies are

22:36

buried and then studied to see how they

22:38

decompose in various conditions. UH.

22:40

If you would like to visit us on the web,

22:42

you can do that at miss in history dot com.

22:44

We have an archive of all of our episodes, show

22:46

notes for all of the episodes that have aired since Tracy

22:49

and I became hosts, and an

22:51

assortment of other goodies. You should

22:53

absolutely visit us there at misston history dot

22:55

com. And our parents site how Stuff Works dot com

23:01

for more on this and thousands of other topics.

23:04

Does it has to have workstop cor