Lore - Lore 270: On Display
Episode Date: December 30, 2024Sometimes appearances can be deceiving. Right beneath the surface, dark stories are hidden from view. All we need to do to uncover the shadows, though, is to pay them a visit. Narrated and produced by... Aaron Mahnke, with writing by Alex Robinson, research by Jamie Vargas, and music by Chad Lawson. ————————— Lore Resources: Episode Music: lorepodcast.com/music Episode Sources: lorepodcast.com/sources All the shows from Grim & Mild: www.grimandmild.com ————————— Sponsors: Mint Mobile: For a limited time, wireless plans from Mint Mobile are $15 a month when you purchase a 3-month plan with UNLIMITED talk, text and data at MintMobile.com/lore. To report a concern regarding a radio-style, non-Aaron ad in this episode, reach out to ads (at) lorepodcast.com, and include the name of the company or organization so we can look into it. ———— To advertise on our podcast, please reach out to sales@advertisecast.com, or visit our listing here. ———— ©2024 Aaron Mahnke. All rights reserved.
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In some ways, they are exactly what you would expect to find in a medical museum. Three separate volumes on women's health, two from French publishers in the late 1600s,
and a third from London a century later.
Every good medical library needs books, after all, so it's surprising to learn that these
three tomes are locked away rather than on display in the facility's museum.
Not because the topics they cover have gone out of date, although there's no doubt they
are far from current, and not because they had somehow been censored by the institution.
No, these three books are not on display at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia
because they are bound in human skin.
To be more specific, their spines are bound in skin from the thigh of a woman named Mary Lynch,
who passed away in 1869.
It seems that the physician who cared for her in the hospital, Dr. John Stockton Hough,
also conducted her autopsy. And for some reason, he removed some of her skin and tanned it.
Years later, he used that human leather to bind three of his favorite medical books,
texts on women's health bound in the skin of a woman. And that's why they aren't on display,
for just about every ethical reason you could imagine. What he did was very wrong. And that's why they aren't on display for just about every ethical reason you could
imagine.
What he did was very wrong.
And yet, here they are.
These three objects, known as anthropodermic books, exist in a duality.
They are pieces of medical history valuable for the text they contain.
But they are also literally human remains.
You just can't tell at first glance.
And in many ways, that's true of a lot of history.
The people, places, and events we think we know often have another dimension to them.
Yes, sometimes what you see is what you get.
But every now and then, there's more to the story.
Because history is never skin deep.
I'm Aaron Manke, and this is Lore.
A lot of people live there today, and that's always been the case.
It's hard to blame them, really.
It's a spot of land on the shores of a massive river, roughly 50 miles from the sea, with
plenty of space to spread out and turn it into a community.
Today we might call it London, but the settlement there is thousands of years older than first
glance might suggest.
Archaeologists are always digging and expanding what we know, but right now it's believed
that the London area was first settled around 8,000 years ago.
These Iron Age folks built bridges and forts to protect and navigate the marshy land north
of the Thames, something that later communities would repeat down through history.
Then, as most people know, the Romans arrived in 43 AD
and set up their own town there,
which they called Londinium.
They built a large stone wall around the community
and then held on for a few hundred years.
After they left, settlers from Europe,
largely from Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands,
took their place and set up the seven Anglo-Saxon kingdoms
that eventually gave us England.
That's the backstory.
It's an oversimplification of thousands of years of history that misses way too many
details.
But just hold on to one big idea.
That marshland on the north shore of the River Thames has always been important, and it was
about to become even more so.
In 1066, a guy named William of Normandy invaded Britain and defeated the ruling king, Harold
Godwinson, at the Battle of Hastings.
It's a touchy subject.
For the folks that hated him, he was William the Bastard.
For those who loved him, though, they called him William the Conqueror.
History records him as King William I, and William knew how to make his mark on a landscape.
Recognizing the importance of that spot of land along the river, he had a fortress built
there, and he did this in the style that he was used to back home in Normandy, with this
massive squarish tower jutting up nearly a hundred feet into the sky.
He even had white limestone brought over from France to help it feel more like home.
Creature comforts, I suppose. But this white structure did something else.
It stood out on the London skyline like an alien artifact, reminding everyone who looked upon it
that they had a new king, and that king was powerful and ready to defend himself. And as
the years passed by, London became synonymous with that tower, the Tower of London.
Now, if you've ever visited the place or seen documentaries about it, you know it's
not just a single tower anymore.
Over the centuries, more and more structures were built around it, almost like satellites.
William's son, William II, surrounded the tower with a big wall and a defensive ditch,
and other monarchs after him added buildings and towers inside that wall.
Look at an aerial view of the place sometime.
It's a glorious orderly mess of lawns and structures.
But everyone uses their home in a unique way, and that central tower has been a chameleon
over the years.
Sure, it started out as a fortress home for the king himself, but it also eventually became
a prison, and whenever we think about medieval himself, but it also eventually became a prison.
And whenever we think about medieval dungeons, it's easy to envision something darker.
Torture In the Tower of London, torture was said to
come in three delicious flavors.
First and foremost was the rack, a tool designed to literally stretch a prisoner's body to
the point that their limbs were dislocated from their torso, sometimes even ripping them
off completely.
A lot of the time, just being shown the rack was enough to get prisoners talking, and honestly,
can you blame them?
The second method of torture was a bit less frequently used.
Known as the scavenger's daughter, it was a sort of reverse rack designed to compress
someone to death.
And the third option was the manacles, those old Hollywood favorites.
Using those iron bracelets and their connecting chains,
a prisoner could be hung up in all sorts of positions,
putting horrible strain on their feet and their hands.
And of course, what discussion of a prison would be complete
without mentioning the many executions that took place there?
Inside the walls of the tower itself,
only 22 people are known to have been executed
out on the Tower Green.
That's where people of high status,
like nobility or royalty, were killed.
A private affair, if you will.
Most executions, though, took place outside the walls
and across the road on what is known as Tower Hill.
On that spot, over 100 people were killed in public
on full display for anyone passing
by, which, knowing how medieval monarchs worked, was often the point. All these ingredients have
combined over the centuries to give the Tower of London a dark reputation, a place of domination
and protection, of stability and power, and of torture and death. And naturally, that reputation also involves ghosts.
Most ghost stories start with a real person, and for this one we need to go back to the
13th century.
Henry III was born in 1207 and inherited the throne when he was just nine years old.
The next time you wonder if your kid is spending too much time on roadblocks, just be glad
they aren't a monarch of a massive kingdom.
Now if you've read enough history, you know that not all kings and queens were cut from the same cloth. Some were warlords like
William the Conqueror and some well weren't and Henry the third was
definitely not known for his prowess on the battlefield. Heck he wasn't even good
at diplomacy but when it came to building things he was one of the best.
If William was the conqueror Henry was the architect. He had 18 new chapels built across England, rebuilt Westminster Palace, and made big improvements to Windsor Chapel.
And we have him to thank for the Gothic style of Westminster Abbey, one of the city's most famous landmarks.
But aside from all of that, Henry poured his penchant for remodeling into the Tower of London.
For instance, that outer wall that William II first built now has 19 little castles on
it, known as mural towers, and Henry built nine of them, adding additional defensive
capabilities and also a bit more residential space.
He added a moat around the tower complex and painted the original central tower white.
One key addition was Henry's Water Gate.
No this wasn't a political controversy involving a medieval tape recorder, it's an entrance
on the side of the wall facing the river, just to the right of the Trader's Gate.
And it comes with a frightening bit of folklore attached to it.
Recorded by a monk named Matthew Paris sometime in the 1240s or 50s, it's a story about the
construction of that
gate.
According to Paris, on April 23rd of 1240, the Water Gate collapsed, taking down parts
of the surrounding walls with it.
Henry was livid and instructed his workers to rebuild it, stronger and better than before.
So they stuck in and started over.
Fast forward to April 23rd of the following year, and that night an old priest had a dream.
In it, the martyr Thomas Becket was seen approaching the new gate, where he pounded a cross against
it.
In that moment, Paris tells us, the real gate collapsed again to the ground.
And when Henry III learned of this priest's dream, he saw a solution.
He called for a small chapel to be built nearby, dedicated to St. Thomas, and once this was
finished the Watergate stood strong and never collapsed again.
Which gives new texture to a report by a yeoman warder who lived in that tower in the 1970s.
He claimed that on more than one occasion he watched as one of the doors in that space silently opened on its own, paused for a moment, and then closed again, all without any visible
person to cause it, and others there have reported seeing the figure of a monk as well
as the sounds of leather sandals on the floor.
So maybe St. Thomas liked the new tower so much that he moved in and never really left.
Near the Watergate Tower is another tower with its own dark reputation.
Known as Wakefield Tower, its story has a connection to a later Henry, Henry VI, who
ruled during most of the 15th century.
Henry is best remembered for being king during the War of the Roses, which was a struggle
between two major houses, the Yorks and the Lancasters.
During the War of the Roses, Henry found himself captured and imprisoned inside the Tower of
London multiple times, inside, according to tradition, the Wakefield Tower.
Well, in the spring of 1741, Henry was captured for a third and final time, and taken back
to the Tower.
On May 21st of that year, the same day that Edward IV rode into London as King, Henry
VI died in the tower.
And right away, foul play was suspected.
And still, time moves on.
Henry was buried at a chapel outside of London for a while, but about a decade later his
remains were moved to Windsor Castle.
They used a lead chest to transport his body, but because it
didn't fit properly, they dismembered it and piled the pieces inside. The perfect
bit of chaos to hide a crime. You see, in 1910, over 400 years later, Henry's
remains were exhumed for study and a shocking surprise was uncovered. It seems
that one of Henry's arms had been stolen back in 1484 and replaced with the
leg of a pig.
During the examination, it was determined that Henry's skull had been shattered, leading
experts to assume that, yes, he had been murdered in the Wakefield Tower.
His missing arm, though, has never been found.
It's been reported that every year on the anniversary of his death, Henry's ghost is
spotted in Wakefield Tower just as the clock begins to strike twelve.
Witnesses have claimed to see Henry's pale form materialize and then pace around the
room.
And finally, as the last of the twelve chimes rings out, his ghost apparently stops and
begins to fade, melting back into the stones of the tower that once held him.
It's one of the most popular exhibits to see.
For anyone who has ever had the privilege to visit the Tower of London firsthand, they
always walk away with strong memories of the Armory.
Now, on Sun level, this is sort of a well-duh moment, right?
England, in many people's minds, is the place where medieval stuff happens, right down to
swords and armor and jousting contests.
Taurus expect a little bit of a knight's tale when they visit the place, and truth be told,
the Tower of London delivers that in spades.
Now of course the tower started right off as a fortress, so it was a military site from
the beginning.
By the 15th century it was even home to the Office of Armory and the Office of Ordinance,
who were officially in charge of making the
stuff, and the more they made, the more they had to store.
By the end of the 16th century, people were reportedly starting to pay for a tour of it
all.
After the Civil War and the restoration of King Charles II, the collection was reorganized
to be more tourist-friendly, and also to put some positive spin on the monarchy.
Wooden figures were carved to wear the armor and displays were created.
And this includes the armor of King Henry VIII.
Now most of us know Henry VIII from his creation of the Church of England in response to the
Catholic Pope refusing to allow him to get divorced.
He's usually depicted as an overweight, round-faced guy with a red beard and a lot of wives.
But he started off as a fit young ruler who loved to joust,
and you can see this in his slender armor on display there.
You also, incidentally, get to see his 1540 Greenwich armor,
which was made for him when he was 49.
If you've toured the armory,
you will remember this particular set
because it features a, shall we say,
generously-sized codpiece.
Seen by most historians as propaganda, it's clearly proof of Henry's tendency to overcompensate.
And you can't blame the guy, either.
His father, Henry VII, named his oldest son Arthur because he was obsessed with the legend
of King Arthur and wanted a real King Arthur in the family tree.
All hope and energy was poured into young Arthur, and when he died at the age of
15, young Henry became a sort of afterthought turned back-up plan, not the best way to build
confidence. Thus, perhaps, the enormous codpiece. Anyway, it seems that Henry VIII's armor is also
haunted. Over the years, many guards and other staff have reported a suffocating sensation
when they enter the room where it's on display.
Some say it feels like strong hands trying to strangle them, while others just feel it's
an overall oppression.
In one story, a guard patrolling the tower in the middle of the night claimed that he
was attacked by a ghost wearing a real physical cloak.
This ghost apparently wrapped the cloak around the guard's throat and began to strangle him with it. He managed to break free, but back in the guard room he pulled the cloak off
and discovered livid red marks all around his neck. Oh, and one other thing. Henry's armor has been
moved around over the years from one room to another, and every time this happens, the reports
of hauntings and feelings of oppression have followed it.
But no discussion of Henry VIII can be complete without mentioning his second wife, Anne Boleyn.
She is famous for being the reason he sought that divorce from his first wife, and,
of course, for being falsely accused of plotting against Henry a few years later,
leading to her imprisonment and death by execution.
to her imprisonment and death by execution. On May 15th of 1536, Anne was declared guilty of high treason and sentenced to death by
execution.
Three days later, she was taken outside the White Tower and beheaded by sword.
One legend says that when Anne learned about the Frenchman who had been hired to swing
that blade, she jokingly told the constable, I heard say the executioner was very good,
and I have a little neck,
suggesting that her short neck required a skilled swordsman.
After she was dead, her body was placed in a chest
and buried inside the chapel of St. Peter,
right there beside the Tower Green.
But it wasn't the last time poor Anne Boleyn has been seen.
If the stories are true, she has haunted the chapel and the tower ever since,
making frequent appearances. Her headless ghost has been seen wandering through the stories are true, she has haunted the chapel and the tower ever since, making frequent
appearances.
Her headless ghost has been seen wandering through the Tower Green, sometimes with her
head tucked neatly under one arm.
But it's one incident from 1864 that truly paints the darkest picture.
According to the report, a soldier from the King's Royal Rifle Corps was on duty at the
Queen's House near the Tower Green
when he saw the ghost of Anne Boleyn appear inside the room.
Frightened out of his mind, he stabbed at the figure with his bayonet, but the blade
passed right through her.
After that, the sentry fainted from the terror of the experience, and when he was discovered
by his superior officers a while later, the man assumed the soldier had simply fallen
asleep on the job.
Just before the poor soldier was set to be tried for dereliction of duty, a pair of witnesses came
forward to back up his supernatural claims. They had seen the dead queen as well.
Over the years, sightings of the beheaded queen have continued. But whether true or not,
their persistence makes one thing abundantly clear.
The darkest deeds of the past always have a way of haunting us here, in the present. There are few places like it on Earth.
The Tower of London is a relic from another age, and you can tell that from the moment
you set foot inside.
In fact, it's widely considered to be the best preserved 11th century fortress in all
of Europe, but it's so much more than that.
The Tower of London,
spanning all of its many buildings and smaller towers,
has become home to much of what we associate
with medieval England.
It holds the crown jewels.
It served as a prison for traitors
and maintains that massive collection of weapons and armor.
And of course, there are the ghosts.
I've skipped over some of the better knownknown ghost stories on this journey into the past
because they have been discussed in previous episodes.
Tales like the Two Princes feel right at home alongside stories of beheaded queens, which
might explain the enduring nature of those legends and the persistence of the sightings.
Back in 1876, due to a sinking floor and crumbling columns, Queen Victoria ordered
the Chapel of St. Peter be restored and remodeled. In the process, the pavement over the site marked
as Anne Boleyn's grave was peeled back, and then they began to dig down. At a depth of just two feet,
they found a collection of bones, exactly what you would expect to find after a wooden box containing a naked corpse was given nearly three and a half centuries to decompose.
The bones were identified as those of an adult female in good health, and when put back together,
they clearly belonged to someone with a short, petite neck.
Anne's remains were eventually reinterred in the restored chapel, but it's much more
difficult to rebury the past.
You see, years later, another guard was keeping watch one night patrolling the grounds around
the Tower Green when he spotted something alarming.
It was a flickering light coming from inside the chapel of St. Peter.
Curious to see who might have entered the chapel without permission, this guard quickly
made his way over to the outer wall of the building and lifted himself up to peer through one of the
windows, and there, visible through the old glass, was a scene that he never expected
to witness.
It was a full procession of figures, all clearly lords and ladies, with some even dressed in
armor as if they were knights.
They were slowly walking from the entrance of the church toward the altar, giving the
scene a somber appearance.
And there, at the head of the procession, was a small, youthful woman, dressed in the
clothing of royalty.
It was Anne Boleyn.
After watching the group walk up the aisle for a few moments, they finally reached their
destination.
As Anne came near the altar,
near in fact where her body is now buried, she and the others began to slowly fade away,
the lights of their procession vanishing with them. The past, as I've already said, is very
persistent, and it seems that the darker the event, the louder and further it echoes down
through the ages. Yes, we can remodel and rebuild and give old places a fresh coat of paint.
But for those who know where to look, the shadows of those darker days are still right
there on display. I truly hope you've enjoyed this visit to the historic and haunted Tower of London.
Whether or not you've had a chance to tour its ancient halls in person, I think these
stories do a great job of covering the horrible deeds of some historic personalities.
After all, where there are people, there is often darkness.
But the stories that haunt the tower aren't limited to humans.
In fact, we've set aside one last bit of folklore for you that sits outside the normal
history of the tower.
Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.
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One of the first things you see when you enter the interior grounds of the Tower of London
is a caged area that contains a number of black birds, and they are clear proof of just
how powerful folklore can be.
As the legend goes, the Tower of London will continue to stand as long as the six ravens who call it home never fly away.
There's some very detailed story to go along with that, explaining why the ravens are important,
but let's just say that the modern presence of those beautiful blackbirds has nothing to do with loyalty to the tower. No, their wings have been clipped and they're
treated like royalty with twice daily meals and their very own Ravenmaster to look after them.
So, sure, the Ravens haven't flown away and the tower still stands and those two details really
just have nothing to do with each other. But something that is rooted in fact is the tower's
long history as an actual zoo.
And to understand why that happened, we need to step back into the days of William the
Conqueror.
It seems that his son Henry kept a collection of exotic animals at his palace at Woodstock.
Maybe that was just part of normal behavior for European royalty, or maybe it was a new
and unique seed that was about to take root.
The proof, I suppose, arrived a century later.
In 1204, during the reign of John I, a collection of animals was brought to the Tower of London
and they would end up staying there for good.
The first payment on record for a zookeeper there at the tower was in 1210, and as the
years went by, the different types of animals there just kept growing, often through gifts received from other monarchs.
For example, in 1235, Henry III, our builder king, was given three live leopards by the
Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II.
A few years later, the King of Norway sent him a polar bear, and right after that, the
King of France sent a full-grown African elephant.
Although, sadly, that gift didn't live too long.
It seems the zookeepers believed that it could subsist on a diet of raw meat and wine despite
being an herbivore who needed fresh drinking water.
By the time Queen Elizabeth I was in power, even the public could come see the menagerie
there at the tower, before a fee, of course.
And her successor, James I I also received an elephant as a
gift. This time from the King of Spain. Although it too sadly died after being given too much wine to
drink. And then in 1822 the zoo there really took off. That was the year that the tower hired a new
zookeeper by the name of Alfred Copps. And during his tenure there he managed to bring in over 300 new specimens.
And true to form, my research team gave me a really long list of all the different kinds
of animals, so here's just a sample from their notes.
A grizzly bear, bangle lions, a barberry lioness, African bloodhounds, a jackal, mongoose, kangaroo, various monkeys, an elk, a zebra, a porcupine, an alligator,
and a boa constrictor.
But with all of these wild animals came risk and responsibility.
Aside from the elephants that were killed by what was essentially alcohol poisoning,
there were several incidents of animal cruelty.
James I once ordered his zookeeper to experiment with the violent nature of the
lion by sending mastiffs, these large hunting dogs, into the enclosure to see who would
win in a fight. Two mastiffs died and a third was wounded before they called it off.
On another occasion, the wife of a zookeeper reached into the lion's cage with a hope of
patting its gigantic paw, only to get her arm so viciously clawed
that she bled to death before anyone could help her.
Oh, and that 1822 zookeeper, Alfred Copps, you know, the one who brought in over 300
animals, was attacked by one of his own additions, the boa constrictor that nearly broke his
spine.
His assistants only managed to save the man by breaking the snake's fangs.
Thankfully, after concerns over the welfare of the animals at the Tower Zoo, the Duke
of Wellington managed to get it shut down in 1835, shipping most of them to the region's
park zoo.
But while the animals themselves might be gone, their spirits live on at the tower,
and quite literally, according to some.
Visitors and staff over the years have heard the sounds of invisible horses galloping on
the cobblestones.
Others have heard the roar of lions that no longer live there, shattering the night with
their terrifying call.
And in 1815, one of the guards of the Jewel House spotted something that should not have
been possible.
The man was standing just outside the Martin Tower when he heard the clock strike midnight,
and as it did, a massive bear seemed to emerge from the shadow-filled archway leading into
the tower.
Terrified for his own safety, the guard raised his rifle and drove the bayonet right through
the huge beast.
Only, it passed through the bear and instead embedded itself in the thick wooden door of
the tower.
When his fellow guards heard the noise and shouting, they ran to help, but when they arrived they
found the guard passed out cold on the ground. The next day the guard was
described by his superior officer as haunted by fear, a man changed beyond
recognition, and the day after that he was dead, supposedly frightened to death
by what he saw.
Strange?
You better believe it.
But considering the location and its long dark history, I'm honestly not surprised.
It's a miracle that things like that don't happen more often at the Tower of London.
For a structure built to keep a city safe and secure, it seems to have played host to far too many dangerous moments for any one person to bear.
This episode of lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Manke, with research by Jamie Vargas and music by Chad Lawson.
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