#tw mummies

[ask-hws-america]

Mini Me at the Smithsonian

National Museum of Natural History

Now THAT'S a cool idea. If I could die and actually stay dead, I'd want an airplane coffin.

⚠️ Warning! ⚠️ Animal mummies below! 👇

Even a lizard mummy! Not a fan of the snakes, though...😬

[mariusrenathyrs]

richie PLEASE tell me about han dynasty mummies

!!!!!! BET OK!!!! <33 gonna teach yall abt Xīn Zhuī who is over 2000 years old!! ok so Xīn Zhuī was found in 1971 at the Mawangdui archaeological site in Changsha! She was found while a team was digging for a new air raid shelter for a nearby hospital but instead they discovered three tombs! The first and largest being Xīn Zhuī's, the second was her husbands Lì Cāng, and the third was (potentially) their son who we dont know the name of. Xīn's tomb by far is the best preserved out of the three and youll see the condition of her and her grave goods soon! (just as a general tw for everyone, theres going to be pictures of deceased people and in depth discussions regarding her state both peri and post mortem here so if you dont want to see that id advise scrolling <3) with that out of the way, onwards! So like i said she was the best preserved of the 3, for reasons were still a little unsure on! It could have been the depth at which she was buried, luck, or the unknown liquid that coated the bottom of her tomb (more on that later)

(picture by Gary Todd) so this is a photo of her tomb and her maybe sons tomb! (for some reason they didnt want to include her husbands which is mildly annoying but anyways) you can see how much further down she was buried in comparison here, but also just how large her burial chamber was, and itll make sense why in a second, but first, more on this specific method of burial and how they were structured! All three tombs at Mawangdui are rectangular in shape and located at the very bottom of a steep vertical shaft as you can see in the image above. When these tombs were constructed, there would have been beams made from cypress planks, that would have been fitted together snugly. Then clay and dirt were layered around the tombs and packed firmly, to help insulate them and protect the tombs. This type of burial actually does not originate with the Han Dynasty, but instead came to be during the Zhou Dynasty. Each burial chamber found had the tomb of the deceased placed directly in the middle, in a series of nesting coffins, with their grave goods placed around the deceased individual in separate chambers. And god did Xīn have A LOT of grave goods. Here is an image of her tomb, undisturbed. You can see, her tomb is placed squarely in the middle, with her grave goods on the sides!

(Unknown Photographer) She was discovered with a total of 1,400 grave goods inside her tomb! ranging from funerary items, to aid her in the afterlife (called míngqì) to items for everyday use such as furniture, toiletries, silk clothing, and dishware! additional fun fact about the dishware recovered, it actually contains one of the earliest found sets of chopsticks!

(Hunan Provincial Museum) and finally the third set of items were all foodstuffs for banquets such as meat, vegetables, fruit and grains. (of which i was not able to find pictures of)

ok onto the final part which is actual care and preparation of the deceased so if you dont want to see human remains now is the time to click off this post <3 So like i said she was buried in a set of four nesting coffins!

So the outermost layer was a plain, unadorned wooden box which is still fascinating and quite frankly is slept on as wood very rarely survives to the modern day! Also an important note to make is its possible that this wooden box was at some point painted like her other three coffins are (youll see in a second what i mean, theyre beautiful!) but paint is another thing that sadly does not tend to survive for very long, so its rarely seen in archaeological finds and since this was the outermost box, its possible it just got worn away with time.

(Hunan Provincial Museum) these are the other three coffins! so the one on the left was the second layer, the one in the center the third, and the one all the way to the right is the one she was actually buried in. You can see the beautiful painting work i mentioned here! Some close up shots of the outer layer!

(Hunan Provincial Museum) So this layer depicts her souls journey to the afterlife, the world of immortals! Whats interesting is since Xīn was from Southern Han, she would have most likely believed that humans had not one but two souls (a fairly common belief around the world actually! such as the norse believing your soul was made up of four parts but this isnt about them right now maybe a post for another time <3) Their belief states that the souls two parts are hún and pò. Hún is the part of the soul which makes the dangerous journey to the afterlife, while pò stays within the tomb, which is why theyre buried with so many items! These items were meant to be used by the deceased's pò. Coffin number 2!

(Hunan Provincial Museum) This red coffin depicts many animals thought to be protectors of the deceased's hún for its long and arduous journey to the afterlife , animals such as dragons, tigers and deer. Beneath the dragons, there appears to be figures of the immortals in dance. Coffin number 3!

This is the final coffin, the one in which she was laid to rest in. It was painted in solid black paint with a silk banner laid on top.

(Hunan Provincial Museum) This silk banner actually depicts a continuous narrative of Xīn's death and funeral, her trip to the afterlife, and then her arrival. Some details of the tapestry <3

This tapestry also shows potential depictions of the famous Chinese myth of Archer Yì and his wife Cháng’é, as well as a potential depiction of Nǔwā at the top, the Goddess of Creation. Now Xīn's body is where things get a little bit odd! So she was tightly and carefully wrapped in 20 (!) layers of damask silk, which was then tied with 9 silk ribbons! Her body was also submerged in 21 gallons of an unknown, slight acidic liquid which tested very high for magnesium! a scrap of the silk recovered

(Hunan Provincial Museum) Now when they removed her from her tomb, people were shocked at how well preserved she was! An autopsy and scans were performed and revealed that there was still blood inside of her veins, and that her skin was soft and her limbs could still be bent at the joints with ease. Her hair and tongue are also still completely intact! Unfortunately as soon as she was unearthed, she began to decompose with the introduction of oxygen, so her current state isnt how she looked pre excavation.

Due to the remarkable condition shes in, we were able to tell a lot about her peri mortem! We know she had gallbladder disease. But this isnt what killed her. Due to the presence of blood in her veins, scientists were able to see clots that formed during a heart attack, meaning this was likely her cause of death. She also had extremely high levels of lead and mercury present in her system, as well as melon seeds in her stomach, suggesting this was her final meal. Today, Xīn Zhuī is resting in the Hunan Museum, alongside her grave goods. You can still visit the site today where she was excavated.

[ecohorrors]

newest and most accurate sleeping position guide yet! :) 💖😴💤

[aestheticallynotdeerlightful]

I’d love to hear more on Cub! Is he truly alive or is he technically dead?

Oof- sorry it took me so long to answer this

Personally I consider mummies in a sub-group of zombies, they’re not as bitey persay, but they’re basically just the undead wrapped up in linen. they’re not as aggressive, and They didn’t become undead through bites or infections. Technically the only things they have in common is being reanimated corpses. So like a very very distant cousin of zombies

Which goes to say- if a zombie bit a mummy, would that mummy then be considered a zombie? Or would it not have any affect on them? Hm

But to answer your question he is dead yes, just reanimated with vex magic. Perhaps a respawn would do him wonders..

[radiojamming]

got too lazy to sync it up with any effort beyond a minute so 

yeah

[entwinedmoon]

John Torrington: Sacred to the Memory of

(Previous posts 1, 2, 3, 4)

This is the part of the story people usually know.

In 1845, the Franklin Expedition left England and sailed into the Arctic. The families of the crew eagerly waited for the day their loved ones would return.

And waited.

And waited.

Years went by and soon people started to realize something had gone wrong. Franklin’s wife, Jane, was chief among those who demanded rescue missions be sent to find the missing ships. Eventually, rescue missions were sent but with little luck.

In 1850, five years after the ships had left England, various rescue crews had converged on Beechey Island, a tiny triangle of frozen land, where signs of Franklin’s expedition had been found—the harbor for their first winter in the Arctic, it would be discovered later. The rescue crews, which included Robert Goodsir, brother to Harry Goodsir, the naturalist on board Erebus, scoured the small piece of land for any indication of where the ships had gone.

Then they found the graves.

(WARNING: Pictures of mummified bodies beneath the cut)

Three members of Franklin’s crew had been laid to rest on this far-flung Arctic island as long ago as 1846, less than a year into the expedition. The bodies of these three men lay buried in a desolate place their families would never be able to visit, never to lay flowers on their graves. For Robert Goodsir, it was a brief sigh of relief to read the names on the wooden headboards and realize his brother was not among them.

But for the families of those three men, who after five years of praying for their loved ones’ safety now discovered they’d already been dead for four years, there was no relief.

John Torrington has the notoriety of being the first known member of the Franklin Expedition to die. It’s possible there may have been deaths before him, but considering the amount of effort put into the burials on Beechey, there probably would have been a grave or at least a memorial somewhere to honor anyone who died before reaching Beechey, none of which has yet to be found. Therefore, Torrington is assumed to be the first.

Torrington died January 1, 1846, a little over seven months into the expedition. He was followed by Able Seaman John Hartnell, from Erebus, a few days later. Marine Private William Braine, also from Erebus, joined their private graveyard in April.

Torrington’s headboard contained the inscription:

Sacred to the memory of John Torrington who departed this life January 1st, A.D. 1846, on board of H.M. ship Terror aged 20 years

The earliest known photograph of his headboard, complete with black and white paint that has long since faded, is shown below.

Elisha Kent Kane, one of the rescue explorers, noted that Torrington’s grave wasn’t as well decorated as the other two, calling it “more grave-like” in appearance. Hartnell and Braine also had Bible verses on their headboard inscriptions whereas Torrington did not. There are also some differences between the burials beneath the surface. I think the differences between Torrington’s grave and the graves of Hartnell and Braine are due to Torrington being from Terror while Hartnell and Braine were from Erebus. Torrington’s burial arrangements most likely were overseen by Crozier, captain of Terror. Franklin would have overseen that of Hartnell and Braine, possibly with the assistance of Fitzjames. Franklin was a very religious man, so it makes sense that he would have chosen Bible verses for the headboards. Crozier seemed not as evangelical as his superior. He comes off in his biographies (all two of them) as an understated sort of man, someone who faced dangerous conditions at sea with utter calm—on the outside, at least. I can definitely see Crozier selecting a basic approach to the burial, something efficient and respectful without any frills. It also would have been a very serious moment for him. He was responsible for his crew, and the first fatality was on his ship, something he probably felt guilty about.

Three deaths—and less than a year after leaving England—was an ominous sign for the rescue crews. What had happened to cause such a tragedy so early on? Was something wrong on the ships? Illness? Lack of food? What had happened?

The rescue missions continued in earnest, desperate to discover the final fate of the expedition, but for three families, the fates of the men who mattered had already been determined. The grief they suffered can only be imagined.

Eventually, thanks to John Rae, an Arctic explorer who brought back relics from the expedition and stories from the Inuit about a large group of white men dying on King William Land (now King William Island), some of them even resorting to cannibalism near the end, the Admiralty of the Royal Navy considered the entire expedition lost. The crew was officially discharged as dead in 1854.

This meant, in practical terms, that the families of the men would stop receiving allotment payments. But the families of the men buried on Beechey Island would have stopped receiving payments years earlier, because as soon as the Admiralty discovered the death dates of the three men, each one was retroactively discharged as dead on that date. However, the families of Torrington and Hartnell had already received allotment payments for the four years during which the men had already been dead, (Braine did not allot any of his pay to anyone, as far as I can tell). Hopefully the Admiralty didn’t try to get their money back from these grieving families.

It doesn’t quite seem fair, though, that the rest of the crew’s families received an additional four years of allotment payments, even though many of the men had probably died by 1850 anyway (it’s now assumed that the majority of the crew perished in 1848, shortly after abandoning ship). But those families also had to contend with not knowing the exact fate of their loved ones. Some consider the men buried on Beechey the lucky ones. They died before the situation turned dire, before the death march along the coast of King William Island, where the men abandoned the ships, starving, suffering from scurvy, hauling impossibly heavy sledges in a last-ditch attempt at reaching salvation, only to die one by one, eating whatever was available, even if that meant their recently deceased comrades.

No one survived from the Franklin Expedition. But why did they all die? That’s the question that has haunted people for almost two centuries. It’s the question that drives people from archaeologists to armchair enthusiasts to try to find any little clue that could finally fit the pieces together.

One person who tried to fit the pieces together was anthropologist Owen Beattie.

Beattie used modern forensics techniques on the remains of the Franklin Expedition members to determine how they may have died. He began his research on bones found on King William Island. Chemical analysis showed unusually high lead levels, which got him to thinking. Lead poisoning can cause a wide variety of negative effects—from weight loss and headaches to convulsions and death. It can also affect cognitive functions. Had the Franklin Expedition been hobbled by a lack of reason, making questionable decisions that led to their demise, thanks to lead poisoning?

That was Beattie’s hypothesis, but bones only show a person’s lifelong lead levels, which means these poor victims could have gradually been exposed to lead all their lives. The entire crew wouldn’t have been affected, just these individuals. Recent exposure, however, would indicate a problem on the expedition itself, where everyone may have been exposed to large quantities in a short amount of time. But to prove recent exposure, Beattie would have to look at hair and soft tissue samples.

Soft tissue preserved in permafrost would work perfectly.

Beattie figured the men buried on Beechey Island would have been preserved enough to be able to take samples from them, so he obtained the needed permissions to perform exhumations and autopsies, bringing an archaeologist and pathologist with him to discover just what caused the deaths of Franklin and his men.

In 1984, Beattie and his team went to Beechey Island. They would exhume and autopsy Torrington, and briefly exhume Hartnell (there wasn’t enough time to autopsy him—they would return to do so in 1986, when they would also autopsy Braine), then rebury them.

They approached Torrington first. First to die, first to be exhumed. His wooden headboard had become severely worn by 138 years of arctic conditions and would be replaced with a bronze memorial years later. The team began digging, hacking their way through the frozen ground. It took hours before a mahogany coffin emerged, covered in dark blue wool with white linen tape lining the edges. Brass handles were bolted to the sides—right and left, the right one still pointing up, as if a pallbearer had only just placed it in the ground. Brass rings were bolted at the foot and head of the coffin. Interestingly, Hartnell and Braine’s coffins had faux handles, outlined with white linen tape, rather than real ones like Torrington’s.

On top of the coffin was a marker pointing to true north as well as a dark blue-green plaque, roughly heart-shaped (or guitar-pick-shaped, according to my sister), which read:

John Torrington died January 1st 1846 aged 20 years

They removed the coffin lid and began to thaw the frozen contents. An outline of a body draped in blue wool slowly emerged. Finally, they were able to peel away the fabric and came face to face with John Torrington.

Torrington was remarkably well preserved, looking as if he’d only just been buried. However, his face had been darkened by the blue wool covering him, and his eyes were half open, revealing blue irises. His lips had curled up, revealing his teeth in a rictus grin. Desiccation and decay can cause the lips to curl back, and there’s even a special term for when the mouth falls open and the tongue sticks out—mummy gape. However, the level of protrusion of Torrington’s lips is more extreme than I’ve typically seen in my time as an amateur mummy enthusiast. I want to say that it wasn’t just desiccation but possibly ice freezing between the lips that caused that degree of protrusion. The most comparable mummy I’ve seen so far is a desert mummy from the Tarim Basin:

But Torrington’s lips are pulled out even farther than that. I’m not an anthropologist, though, and while I love studying mummies, it’s just a hobby, so take any of my opinions here with a grain of salt.

Now let’s move on to the most important topic—his hair. According to the autopsy report, Torrington had long brown hair, but it’s hard to tell that from the photos that have been released. He’s lying on top of a bed of wood shavings, and some people have mistaken the wood shavings for his hair, thinking he was rocking some Roger Daltrey curls. Honestly, when I first saw the pictures of him when I was a child, I thought he was bald because I couldn’t tell where his hair was (his hair had separated from his scalp, so technically he is bald—now). On closer inspection (and yes, this is a very important topic), you can see wisps of his hair in certain areas around his head, particularly in the upper left corner of the picture above (or at least I think that’s his hair). It does indeed look brown, perhaps with some lighter highlights (but that could just be the lighting). But how long is long, exactly? Are we talking shoulder length? Shorter? Longer? These are the things people need to know.

Beattie and his team had noted the coffin was rather small, more like a child’s, and now they realized why. John Torrington was only 5 feet 4 inches (163 cm) tall. Friedrich Engels would probably blame this lack of height on a hard life in Manchester. He dedicated part of The Condition of the Working Class in England to a discussion about how short, pale, thin, and feeble Mancunians looked thanks to factory work. He said men from Manchester almost never reached 5’8”, usually only reaching 5’6” or 7”. Average height for Victorian men was actually around 5’6”, but the working class did tend to be shorter. While Torrington would be considered vertically challenged by today’s standards, (I’m an inch taller than him, for instance), he may not have stood much shorter than his working-class peers. (It does not help, though, that both Hartnell and Braine were around six feet tall—this makes Torrington the runt of the litter.)

Torrington weighed less than 88 pounds (40 kg), part of which may have been due to postmortem desiccation—mummified bodies tend to look a bit shrink-wrapped—but there were signs he may have lost a significant amount of weight before death. The lack of calluses on his hands also seemed to suggest a long illness that had rendered him unable to work, although as I discussed in my last post, he may not have had much to do on board ship anyway.

A kerchief, white with blue polka dots, had been tied around his head to keep his jaw shut. Was this a favorite kerchief of his, or just one they had to spare? A sample of the kerchief was not taken by Beattie, in order to minimize disturbance of the body, but samples of his other clothes and bindings were.

He wore a white cotton print shirt with thin blue stripes, and plain grayish-white pants made from linen. Analysis of the pants suggested that they had rarely been worn, if ever. It’s odd that he had been dressed in unworn pants. Had these pants recently been made for him, but he’d never had the chance to wear them? This is particularly strange when paired with the fact that neither Hartnell nor Braine were found wearing any pants at all. No pants versus never-worn pants. Why was Torrington the only one buried in them, and why such new ones? This is a bizarre quandary, but perhaps not the greatest mystery of the Franklin Expedition.

Torrington’s shirt, on the other hand, showed signs of significant wear, including stains and a few tears. Unfortunately, when the body was being lifted out of the coffin, part of the shirt was still frozen to the bottom, and the back part tore off. Beattie and his team took the large, irregularly shaped piece as a sample. For some reason, the idea that he’s wearing only half a shirt bothers me. It’s cold up there! Would it be inappropriate to knit him a sweater?

Probably…

Moving on…

There were also unbleached muslin strips tying his limbs to his body for ease of transport into the coffin. The strip binding his elbows was taken as a sample, and it contained light colored hair caught in the knot. Whose hair was this? Was this Torrington’s hair, perhaps a lighter strand having gotten caught on the strip? Or was this from whoever tied the fabric around him? One of the doctors on Terror probably prepared him for burial. Was it their hair? But if it was one of the doctors, which one? I don’t know what Dr. John Peddie looked like, but Dr. Alexander MacDonald had red hair. The only description given of the hair found in the knot was “light colored.” Ginger hair is light colored. Was this MacDonald’s hair?

After Torrington was thawed and removed from his coffin, Beattie and his team began the autopsy. However, unlike with Hartnell’s and Braine’s autopsies in 1986, I have been unable to find any pictures from Torrington’s autopsy. That might sound like an odd thing to complain about, but I’m curious as to why there aren’t any. In fact, I haven’t been able to find any photos taken from after he was removed from the coffin. There are a limited number of photos of Torrington in circulation, and they’re all of him still in the coffin. Why is that? Pictures were taken during the autopsy, but were they lost? Were they not released out of respect for Torrington? If so, then why have a documentary crew film parts of Hartnell’s and Braine’s autopsies? It’s a weird difference between the two exhumations that I don’t understand.

Despite the lack of pictures, there are thorough descriptions of the autopsy, both in the official report and in Beattie’s book, Frozen in Time, co-authored with John Geiger. The autopsy revealed that Torrington’s lungs were completely blackened—a prominent symptom of black lung, the notorious disease common among coal miners. Since Torrington was raised in Manchester—Coal Smoke Central in the Victorian age—and he worked as a stoker and it’s assumed that he smoked, this isn’t too surprising, but for his lungs to be completely black at only age twenty is disconcerting. Just how much coal and smoke was he exposed to? His lungs also contained scar tissue from previous lung disease. It seemed he suffered from emphysema, which can be caused by black lung, but it’s something that usually doesn’t strike until later in life. His heart had shrunk, which could have been caused by the emphysema but was probably due to post-mortem cellular decay as there was nothing else noticeably wrong with it. There were also signs of tuberculosis and pneumonia. Basically, Torrington had a lot of health problems. Did he know he was sick? Or did he just think everyone had a hard time breathing sometimes? In Manchester, that may very well have been true…

While there were no conclusive findings as to what caused his death, it was determined that pneumonia, brought on by tuberculosis, was the most likely culprit. He would have suffered a long, slow illness, wasting away until the pneumonia struck and mercifully cut his agony short.

Samples were taken from Torrington’s bones, hair, fingernails, and organs to be examined further in a lab. He was then redressed, placed back into his coffin, and reburied, but I wonder exactly how much care was given to putting him back together again after the autopsy. His kerchief wasn’t removed because they didn’t want to disturb the body too much, but they cut open his skull—did they slide the kerchief off and then back on again, or did they remove the skull cap only a little? They removed it enough to see that his brain had decayed into a yellow granular fluid, that’s for sure. Pieces of him were taken—some of his hair and nails, part of his radius (but from which arm? I’ve never been able to find that out). Seeing the pictures of his body looking so well preserved, it can be hard to think of the fact that it no longer looks the same. I’ve wondered many times what he looks like now, leading to the creation of a Word document on my computer titled “Things I know are missing from John Torrington,” a very normal type of document to have. I try not to think what climate change and the thawing of permafrost in the Arctic is doing to him now. Even though he’s long dead, it feels like another death to think of his body decaying and falling apart. But that’s a discussion for another time.

Beattie tested the samples he’d taken from Torrington when he returned from Beechey. Chemical analysis revealed elevated lead levels in the bones, but the levels were lower than those from the King William Island samples. Torrington’s hair, however, had lead levels of over 600 parts per million, indicating acute lead poisoning. Beattie theorized that the lead came from the tin food cans taken on the expedition. This changed the conversation about how the Franklin Expedition met its end, with lead poisoning being a perfect explanation for some of the confusing decisions the officers seemed to have made.

However, the level of lead in Torrington’s hair was much higher than in Hartnell’s or Braine’s, which suggests that he was exposed to more lead than either of them. Beattie didn’t offer an explanation for this discrepancy, but I wonder, did he eat more of the tinned food? Or was it something else? Coal ash can contain lead, so perhaps Torrington’s particularly high levels came about in part by his exposure to coal through his job as a stoker.

There are still debates over whether or not lead poisoning actually played a role in the Franklin Expedition’s demise, especially since high lead levels were common in the Victorian era. Some people have argued that the lead came from other sources, while others insist it came from before the expedition even set sail. I’m not going to argue one way or another, but Torrington did have very high levels of lead in his system. How exactly did it affect him? Was he driven mad by it, or did it act more subtly, weakening his already weakened immune system so that he succumbed to tuberculosis and pneumonia more easily? I don’t know. But however large or small the role that lead played in his death, it was due to Beattie’s theory that Torrington was exhumed and that we got to see him, to meet him across the years.

Next: the family he left behind.

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Torrington Series Masterlist

[rebellum]

Ötzi the iceman is fucking dabbing

[radiojamming]

[WARNING: In-depth discussion of human remains along with relevant images, some of which may be disturbing.]

In the electric hustle of the mid-1980s, there weren’t many eyes turned toward the loneliest corners of the Canadian Arctic. It was a forward-momentum period, caught up the 20th century’s mach-speed technological progress and cultural change. In all of this movement, it took something quietly monumental to turn heads toward the past and look, quite literally, into its eyes. The world looked into three 140-year-old graves in permafrost, and found three sets of eyes wearily looking back.

Their names were John Torrington, John Hartnell, and William Braine. In Victorian society, they would have faded into the backdrop of the social tapestry. One was a working-class petty officer, another a former shoemaker that had recently joined the Navy, and the third a private in the Royal Marines. In their world, they were perfectly ordinary—but it was their deaths that made them extraordinary. In time, they would be called the Beechey Island or Franklin Expedition mummies, and would become instrumental in helping to solve one of the greatest mysteries in exploration history.

In this first Mummy Monday, we’ll explore the lives and deaths of the Beechey Island trio, as well as their forensic results, cultural impact, and a further look into their unique process of mummification.

The Franklin Expedition

In international news, the Franklin Expedition has been something of a hot topic as of late. New artifacts, incredible discoveries, and potential vacation routes; not to mention a critically-acclaimed television series in 2018! Its impact is present in multiple facets, but it can be hard to gain a full scope of what it was and why it matters.

The quickest, dirtiest summary is this: in 1845, the British Admiralty sent two well-fitted bomb vessels—HMS Erebus and HMS Terror—into the Arctic to ply the waters for the fabled Northwest Passage. It got very, very cold to the point that the land was inescapable and all 129 men aboard succumbed to any number of horrible fates—disease, starvation, exposure, and possibly even more violent ends. Say what you will about ominous-sounding names for these ships and risking fate, but the results were horrifying across the board. Scottish explorer John Rae even made discoveries of cannibalism among the wreckage of what was to be the most promising of Her Majesty’s exploration attempts, much to the public’s disgust, chagrin, and fascination. 

There is, of course, so much more to the story than just a few quick notes about the horrors nature can inflict and the question of imperialistic hubris. One peek into the fae realm of Franklin-related academia is a little bit mind-boggling, and there have been plenty of glorious attempts to parse it all out. The sources range from contemporary to theoretical, and as much as people agree or disagree, the siren call of Frankliniana can be hard to resist.

So where the hell do you start?

For the sake of Mummy Monday, we’re starting where most of Franklin’s rescue attempts did:

Beechey Island.

Beechey Island

It’s a forbidding corner of the Canadian Arctic, even today. Nestled at the foot of Devon Island in the Wellington Channel of modern-day Nunavut, it can appear either unremarkable or dread-inspiring, depending on the day and the weather. Its nearest inhabited neighbor is the town of Resolute, although its name in Inuktitut gives a better sense of the landscape: Qausuittuq or ‘the place with no dawn’. 

Most explorers tracing the steps of Franklin stop in Resolute to charter passage to Beechey Island. Although there are animals living near the area (different species of sea bird and the iconic polar bear), the tourism sector of Beechey Island is profoundly dedicated to the quiet contemplation of the remains of Franklin’s first winter camp. Scattered across the stones are broken pieces of wood and rusted rings of old Goldner’s cans. To this day, it’s possible to see the ongoing decay of history in the shadow of memorials left behind by past searchers. 

And then there are the graves.

The original headboards are now stored at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. Weather-resistant replacements still bear the same messages as the originals, each recalling the names, statuses, and death dates of three of Franklin’s men. Two graves, from Erebus, have ominous-sounding Bible verses tacked on to the epitaphs. 

There is a fourth grave belonging to Thomas Morgan, an able-bodied seaman (AB) from the HMS North Star who died during a search for Franklin in 1854. Morgan is entombed alongside his Erebus and Terror predecessors, but he has not yet been exhumed.

And yeah, exhumations. That’s what we’re here for on Mummy Monday, after all!

In 1984, Dr. Owen Beattie of the University of Alberta led a crew of researchers and scientists to this lonely point in the Arctic Circle. At the time, he was entertaining the possibility of lead poisoning being a factor in the ultimate fate of the Expedition. Part of this consideration came from the bajillion cans littered across the extensive trail, each soldered shut with clumps of lead that Beattie believed leached into the food the men were eating. Beattie had good reason to pursue this theory! His belief was that the acidic nature of some of the canned food would have caused a breakdown in the lead solder, causing the food to become contaminated. Even without this theory, he wouldn’t have been off the mark at all. Later discoveries contemporary to the Expedition found other cans manufactured and sealed by Stephen Goldner to have gone completely rancid. That, outside of the lead-poisoning theory, certainly wouldn’t have helped matters. Another explanation pointed to the lead piping installed in the ships themselves. Would water passing through these pipes have poisoned the men in the process of drinking or breathing? What about lead-based paints, often needing to be applied throughout the year in new coats, and condensation to follow on steam-powered and heated ships? What about the nature of being a person in the Victorian era in the first place? You were probably about as leaden as a musket ball.

So Beattie made his trek north, intending to exhume John Torrington and crossing his fingers on the possibility of exhuming John Hartnell. People knew these men had died young, even by Victorian standards. Torrington was 20 years old, Hartnell 25, and William Braine 32. Torrington and Hartnell died within three days of one another at the beginning of January, 1846. Braine died only a few months later in April. If Beattie’s theory was correct, then lead may have played a part in why these men were dropping like flies after only a few months on the Expedition. 

As detailed in his book, Frozen in Time, great pains were taken to get permits and carefully exhume John Torrington. It was far from easy. Beattie and his team had to dig, pick, and melt their way through around six feet of gravel and cement-hard permafrost. They had entertained the possibility that permafrost might have preserved the bodies; they had no idea how right they were.

After uncovering one black coffin, edged in decorative white tape and bearing brass handles (one was still in the ‘up’ position), they carefully melted through layers of ice until one researcher reached a piece of blue wool cloth. As gently as possible, he tugged aside the cloth and revealed the frozen face of John Torrington.

Petty Officer and Lead Stoker John Torrington seemed to wearily peer back at the researchers. And he was, in fact, peering. Torrington’s body had been almost perfectly preserved, including his eyes, other soft tissue, and cartilage. His striking appearance startled the researchers, understandably. They had been expecting some degree of preservation, but not this. 

He was only 5′4″ (163 cm) and weighed just under 88 lbs (40 kg). Dressed simply in clothing that showed exactly how underweight he was at the time of his death, something about his appearance struck some emotional chord with the team. In Frozen in Time, Beattie quietly makes the comment that Torrington looked, “just unconscious” and “anything but grotesque”. 

“The expression on his thin face, with its pouting mouth and half-closed eyes gazing through delicate, light-brown eyelashes, was peaceful. His nose and forehead, in contrast to the natural skin colour of the rest of his face, were darkened by contact with the blue-wool coffin covering. This shadowed the face, accentuating the softness of its appearance. The tragedy of Torrington’s young death was as apparent to the researchers as it must have been to his shipmates 138 years before.” (pp. 171-172)

His jaw was bound shut with a polka-dot kerchief (think Jacob Marley) and his limbs were tied together using cotton wrapping. Researchers made note of his hands, which showed some of the greatest degree of his preservation.

What was even more incredible was the full degree of flexibility his body retained. Beattie and a team member lifted Torrington from his coffin for his full autopsy, and as they did so, Torrington’s head rolled onto Beattie’s left shoulder. Beattie also noted how light and limp Torrington was more or less like lifting an unconscious child.

Samples were taken of Torrington’s hair, nails, organs, and brain. The fact that these samples could be taken at all was incredible, especially in their state of preservation. After this was done, Torrington was reburied with the utmost respect and the expectation that the grave itself would refreeze from encroaching water. Not only would Torrington be preserved physically, but his photos were about to preserve his memory in ways no one could really expect.

But, of course, he was just one of three.

John Hartnell and the ‘Face of Death’

Researchers literally brushed the surface of Hartnell’s grave in 1984 as time constraints prevented them from doing a full exhumation. They had enough time to do an initial dig and uncover part of him, which was enough to sate their curiosity for the moment. Undoubtedly, they still thought of Torrington’s repose and his more delicate features.

They weren’t really prepared for, uh...

Probably the most pissed-off mummy known to man. At least, that’s what he looked like. One researcher, Walt Kowal, might have summed it up best when he remarked, “This guy is spooky. The quintessential pirate. This guy is frightening.” (p. 184)

He wasn’t entirely wrong. Something about John Hartnell’s face seemed angry, and it didn’t help matters that his right eye was missing. As the water drained away, John Hartnell grimaced where Torrington had just seemed to passively observe. In time, the entire figure of AB John Hartnell emerged.

Dark-haired and hazel-eyed, Hartnell appeared to be something of Torrington’s opposite. Both men had the distinct features of mummification-in-ice, such as the receded and pursed lips from the water and the half-open eyes. That was where the similarities ended, however. Hartnell was bundled up in a blanket and shroud with his head resting on a pillow, where Torrington laid on a bed of sawdust (often mistaken in pictures as his hair). Pains had been taken to make Hartnell look presentable; his hair was combed and cut, his nails trimmed, and his body dressed in three shirts and a hat (no pants, though). 

The question remained almost tangible: why were these men so different?

As the researchers reburied the remains and returned to Alberta to pore over lab results, so to am I going to take a step back and look at their lives in detail.

The Men Behind the Mummies

There’s not much I can say about Torrington that hasn’t been beautifully covered in magnificent detail by my Torrington research counterpart, @entwinedmoon​. Her Torrington research series absolutely floored me with its depth and clear passion for the subject! Literally everything about his life, death, and afterlife is covered in there, so I can’t recommend it enough. And I absolutely agree with the sentiment that tracking Torrington down is like cryptid-hunting. Oof. 

What I can say in a pale shadow of entwinedmoon’s work is that John Shaw Torrington was born around 1825 in the city of Manchester, making him around 19 or 20 at the time of his death. He hadn’t served in the Navy prior to being assigned as a petty officer on HMS Terror, but his lung tissue showed that he’d definitely been exposed to the amount of smoke expected of both a lead stoker and a Manchester resident (given its Victorian reputation as a pollution-belching beast of a city). Exact details of his life are hard to follow, making him something of a shadowy figure for being so front-facing after his death. Examination of his hands showed that at the time of his death, he probably hadn’t done much work between his illness and the fact the ships were frozen in and thus not really needing someone to work their locomotive engines.

And he’d been sick. Really sick.

In the end, it was a combination of tuberculosis and pneumonia that sent John Torrington to his premature grave. He’d been, as discussed, incredibly underweight, but had been well enough to pass a health check in Greenland when some of his comrades had been sent back to England for similar health issues. The when of his illness isn’t known, but it had lingered long enough to thoroughly emaciate him. Had he been sick prior to leaving England and just covered it up? Possibly. Had he been sick but had a flare-up at some point after the health check? Also completely possible. 

In short, after his autopsy it became clear that everything about Torrington’s body was at active war against his life. He’d been small in build and had lungs so scarred with smoke and illness that lung tissue adhered to his chest wall. This wasn’t a man destined to live very long.

As opposed to his neighbor.

A personal aside, John Hartnell is my favorite. I’ve spent years researching his life, his family, and every detail I can hunt down about him, and it’s taking a lot not to just fly right into overshare mode. I can say that Hartnell’s mummy wears a lot of reminders of his life, along with the life of another one of the Expedition’s non-mummified members.

John Hartnell was born in 1820 in Gillingham, Kent. He was the oldest of five siblings and after the death of his father in 1832, immediately went to work as an apprentice shoemaker. Yeah, not a Navy man or a dockyard worker like his father. He signed his name on a form dedicating his time and effort under one Henry Sarge and went to work crafting footwear. A necrotic right wrist bone tells a story of repetitive movements and damage. Growth arrest lines in his ankle bones say that the 5′11″ (180 cm) Hartnell had actually had his growth stunted around the onset of puberty, possibly owing to malnutrition. However, letters from his mother Sarah and brother Charles paint the image of a close-knit family avid to support one another.

So close-knit, in fact, that John was one of two Hartnells on Erebus. His brother, Thomas, was two years younger than him and accompanied John as an AB. Their names appear beside one another in the muster books (possibly including a cousin, John Strickland) and John was buried in one of Thomas’ shirts, with the initials embroidered on a shirttail. 

Although no known letters exist from John or Thomas Hartnell, the grave contents alone paint a remarkable picture of family ties in extraordinary conditions. 

A new question arose, however. Torrington may have been marked by fate with his illness, but Hartnell had been healthy even past the health check in Greenland. What had happened to him? 

For that, we need to go back to Beechey Island in the summer of 1986.

‘Son of a bitch! He’s been autopsied!’

Beattie and his team returned to Beechey Island in June, 1986 with a renewed sense of purpose and, of all things, an x-ray machine. It was set to be the first time such a machine would operate above the Arctic Circle and the team was both eager to try and dreading the worst case scenarios. Results from Torrington encouraged them, as the lab gave the news that Torrington’s hair had showed lead levels far above average, further pointing toward the lead-poisoning theory. Now the researchers were prepared to see if the same held true of John Hartnell and William Braine.

Unfortunately, very little is known of Royal Marine William Braine, aside from the fact that he was a private from Somerset. He’d been married prior to his departure, and seemed to come from a large, poor family. Economic reasons may have led him to join the Royal Marines, and he’d had no choice in where he was set to be assigned. Just as with the rest of the Marines in the Expedition, they were to serve in the Arctic regardless of their choices, and at a regular pay rate as opposed to the regular crew’s double pay. Aside from this, Braine’s life is well-obscured by history at the moment, so I won’t go into his results as much as Hartnell’s which can be correlated with his personal history.

The team re-exhumed John Hartnell after a good deal of difficulty, as shown in this incredible NOVA documentary aired in 1988. In the two years since the last exhumation, very little had changed in Hartnell’s appearance. The main difference was that his remaining eye appeared more sunken, but clearly the ice had done its job in preserving him.

This time, the team cut away his toque and revealed, of all things, a full head of hair.

Brian Spenceley, a physics professor at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, stood in as a photographer during this exhumation. What made his presence remarkable was the fact that he was John and Thomas Hartnell’s great-great nephew. It’s somewhat eerie to see him in the NOVA documentary, juxtaposed with images of Hartnell that are clear enough to show some family resemblances. 

Like Torrington, Hartnell was removed from his coffin for a full autopsy. Unlike Torrington, Hartnell was subjected to x-rays which required removal of his clothing. And very much unlike Hartnell, removal of his clothing revealed another detail that, at risk of sounding clickbait-y, shocked the researchers.

He’d already been autopsied.

Hartnell bore the scars and stitches of an upside-down Y-incision that terminated at his hips rather than his shoulders. It correlated with some initial results of his x-ray which showed a scrambling of organ material, some in places where it shouldn’t have been (his liver in his shoulder, for instance). 

According to Beattie, John Hartnell had been autopsied while still on Erebus, presumably under the hands of assistant surgeon and naturalist Harry D.S. Goodsir. The autopsy appeared hurried, with Hartnell’s chest plate being replaced upside-down as well. Beattie estimated that the entire procedure lasted no more than a half hour. However it had gone, someone had quickly cut out his organs, examined some (such as his heart) in detail at the point of a scalpel, and then shoved the organs back in without a care as to where they went. There are plenty of explanations for the time constraints, including the cold, the threat of disease, and the possible pressure of doing an autopsy under the scrutiny of superstitious sailors and a distraught younger brother. All in all, it gave the team a remarkable chance to observe a Victorian autopsy as they did their own.

As with Torrington, the team took samples of organ, bone, nail, and hair for later analysis. Hartnell’s appearance pointed yet another accusing finger at tuberculosis, but not with the lung damage as sustained in Torrington’s body. It was possible there was something else at work with Hartnell. 

Also, a polar bear interfered, leading to one of the best forensic case notes I’ve ever seen.

Once autopsies and x-rays were concluded (the x-ray machine worked fine, provided it was being warmed by a fish tank water heater), Hartnell was wrapped in a linen shroud with his clothes placed in a bag to be buried with him. With Spenceley present at the reburial and the thought that Thomas Hartnell had been at the graveside 140 years prior, the whole situation carried an extra emotional weight. As Spenceley recalled, at the end he felt as though he was burying someone he knew. 

Once the grave was replaced as accurately as possible following archaeological diagrams and photographs, the time came to exhume the third mummy, William Braine.

And he didn’t look quite right.

Whereas Torrington and Hartnell had retained something of a lively appearance (loosely, at least), Braine looked well and truly dead. He had clearly decomposed to some degree before the preservation qualities of the permafrost could take effect. His eyes were sunken into his head, his skin wax-like, skull prominent, and body slightly twisted in the coffin. One arm was tucked under his body to make him fit into what seemed to be an ill-fitting coffin that, unlike the other two, was not fitted to his measurements. Even the lid had been shoved down until it pressed against his nose and deformed it slightly. And even worse, the skin of one arm showed rat bites. Obviously, it had taken a good while for poor Braine to actually be buried. Like I said, he was 32 at the time of his death. His body sure doesn’t make him look 32.

His x-rays were far more conclusive in the cause of his death, but less so in the case of his burial. Braine’s spine had been literally twisted by tuberculosis.

It clearly had more time to wrack his body. He weighed about as much as Torrington had but stood at 6′0″ (181 cm). A theory arose that Braine had possibly died in a sledge group, causing his companions to haul his body back to shore. He had probably been kept in the hold for some time, in accordance with the bite marks and level of decomposition. 

Sadly, as said, little is known of Braine’s life. He was illiterate, having made an X mark in the muster records. No letters have been found addressed to him or from any of his siblings. While one cursory biography was written by a possible descendant, not much research has been done to solve the mystery of his life (yet).

Braine was thereafter reburied, and this chapter of the Beechey Island’s saga was nearly done. And yet, the exhumations only provided more questions than answers.

Heavy Metal

Lead. Pb. Atomic number 82. 

Zinc. Zn. Atomic number 30.

Neither are innocuous, and both bore some of the blame for what killed the men of the Franklin Expedition. The question is to what degree is the blame well-placed?

Dr. Owen Beattie set about to find out. Sample results from Hartnell and Braine came back from the lab with more bad news on the lead front. Both bodies showed high levels, furthermore damning the solder and piping. However, both Hartnell and Braine showed markedly less lead in their systems than Torrington. 

Results left the cozy realm of academia and out into the great, wide international world. As will be discussed, the photographs of the mummies alone had caused something of a media frenzy, inspiring a new cultural Franklin-themed wave of music, art, and literature. But the lead-poisoning theory rang some discordant bell in the public’s imagination and became less of a theory and more of an accepted fact. Most decided that Franklin’s men had been killed by the lowest bidder of the Admiralty’s victualing department.

Those naughty, naughty Goldner’s tinned foods.

It would be some years before this theory was questioned. In fact, by all appearances, it was Hartnell who seemed to question it the most. After all, the lead content of his body had gone down after leaving England. And how did we know that?

His nails told us so. And that wasn’t the only information they decided to divulge. Because of these findings, scientists could figure out when his sickness began nearly down to the day. Not only that, but they also discovered that John Hartnell had a very severe zinc deficiency.

‘Hartnell’s time machine’ as it was nicknamed became an incredible source for vital clues to the mysteries posed by the Beechey Island trio. The spike at the end of the chart shows the point that Hartnell’s body began to break down and essentially devour itself for one last effort at keeping itself alive. What this revealed was that Hartnell’s illness was practically a flash in the pan; he’d only really been sick for about a month and a half before his death. How did such a dramatic downturn occur?

So far, it seems like a combination of bad genes and that little demon of a zinc deficiency. John Hartnell’s autopsy reports revealed a whole slew of issues from a sprained ankle to a compacted vertebral disc (which would have been painful). It was clear he had lived a hard and active life, with the wear and tear showing on his very bones. The zinc deficiency’s symptoms would have manifested as weight loss, fatigue, poor wound healing, night blindness, and an increased risk of infection. The last symptom in that last may point the most damning finger at what finally killed John Hartnell. If he had a zinc deficiency as severely as it appears, his immune system would have been compromised and he wouldn’t have been able to fight off infection as well as some of his comrades.

Not only that, but lining up historical hints adds another sinister factor to the list.

In 1853, an exhumation attempt was carried out on his grave under the auspices of Sir Edward Augustus Inglefield of the HMS Isobel and his physician, Dr. Peter Sutherland (the group that put the pickax through his arm). One letter refers to the body as:

“perfectly preserved by the intense cold, exhibited no trace of scurvy or other malignant disease, but was manifestly that of a person who had died of consumption, a malady to which it was further known that the deceased was prone.” (Sir Roderick Murchinson, Royal Geographic Society, 1853)

Again: “known that the deceased was prone.” Someone apparently knew or believed that John Hartnell had previously been consumptive. Not only that, but plying a Maidstone newspaper brought up another point:

John Hartnell’s father, also named Thomas, died from a ‘lingering illness’. While there are multiple possibilities as to what this illness was, it lines up nicely with both the historical record and the clues in Hartnell’s body. It’s possible he was ill with tuberculosis prior, had his immune system compromised by his zinc deficiency, and had his previous illness exacerbated by Arctic conditions. 

And all this was learned from one mummy.

While this doesn’t solve the deaths of every member of the Franklin Expedition, the findings at Beechey Island provided incredible insight into their lives and deaths, and may have opened a door into further understanding. 

‘God have mercy on the frozen man’

The forensic results of the exhumations were astounding in themselves, but the cultural impact can’t be understated. The world was taken by the images of Torrington, Hartnell, and Braine. Torrington in particular had his image splashed across magazines and newspapers, becoming the quintessential poster boy of the Expedition. He haunted no lack of dreams (mine included, circa age 7) with his gaunt face and hazy, half-lidded eyes. One might say something about a man straddling the precipice of life and death, as it isn’t often that the dead look at you.

As said, the trio inspired a small but noticeable culture wave, with just a few key and oft-cited examples provided below:

Iron Maiden’s ‘Stranger in a Strange Land’ 

James Taylor’s ‘Frozen Man’

Margaret Atwood’s short story ‘The Age of Lead’

Also, this particularly recognizable scene from AMC’s The Terror!

Paintings, sculptures, tattoos, poems, short stories, cosplay, dolls, and on and on! You could even argue that the discoveries on Beechey Island reignited new interest in the Franklin Expedition, creating a wave of discovery which eventually culminated in the discovery of the shipwrecks of Erebus in 2014 and Terror in 2016. Suddenly, the men of the Expedition were real, as tangible as you or me. People saw their faces, realized that these men were reaching across from the Victorian era into the 20th century. Sure, now they’re mostly condemned to Listverse-type categories of scariest mummies, but they’ve certainly drummed up emotional reactions in their time.

The Process

Now that we’ve covered the who, what, and when, it’s down to the how. How is a body preserved so well in ice and permafrost? The answer, my dear, is as simple as this picture.

It’s refrigeration on a natural level! Just as a refrigerator or freezer slows or completely stops bacteria from causing decay in food items (freeze your meats, my dudes!), permafrost and ice extends the same courtesy to anything buried in them. Of course, the conditions have to be specific! Other bodies found of the Expedition haven’t had even close to the same amount of preservation as the Beechey Island mummies. Wind, animals, and other natural processes have left a trail of skeletons rather than mummies. Clearly, something about depth of burial and level of protection is important as well.

Other ice mummies set to be covered include Ötzi the Iceman, and the Qilakitsoq mummies of Greenland. While there’s some variation as to their causes (glacial freezing and cold, dry air, respectively), the process is essentially the same. Cold stops naughty bacteria! The deep freeze kept the Beechey Island mummies from complete and utter decay, like freezing beef in an ice cube. Granted, if the mummies were ever exposed to warmer-than-freezing air for a pronounced length of time, they would eventually decay. 

Conclusion

The Beechey Island mummies are an invaluable information source for questions about the final, mysterious fate of the men of the Franklin Expedition. Their bodies have provided incredible clues and beautiful insight into their lives as well as the lives of men like them. Not only that, but their cultural impact inspired a new wave of interest and the thought that the border between life and death is a surprisingly fragile one. While their initial appearance may be frightening or shocking to some, it’s important to remember that these were young men thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Their memory and impact is still felt to this day (which I hope makes them happy, wherever they are!). 

If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions on this inaugural Mummy Monday, feel free to hit me up through my askbox or DMs! It’s a lot of fun for me and I’m totally open to any and all comments about how I’m doing! And the next Mummy Monday installment will be about the Qilakitsoq mummies!

Thanks for reading!