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 facilities 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 Not because the topics they cover have gone out of date, although there's no doubt they are far from current, and not because they had somehow been censored by the institution.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 Mutter 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-Huff, 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 favourite 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 yet, here they are. These three objects, known as anthropodermic books, exist in a duality.
There 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 Mankey, 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 Londonium. 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, 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 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 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 9 years old. The next time you wonder if your kid is spending too much time on Roblox, 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 III 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 traitors 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 Beckett was seen approaching the new gate, where he pounded across 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 water gate 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 water gate 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 York's and the Lancaster's. 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 wrote into London as king, Henry VI died in the tower. And right away, foul play was suspected. Still, time moves on. Henry was buried at a chapel outside of London for a while, but about a decade later, his remains removed 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 a 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. With missing arm, though, it's 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 12. Witnesses have claimed to see Henry's pale form materialize and then pace around the room.
And finally, as the last of the 12 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 some level, this is sort of a well-duh moment, right?
England, in many people's minds, is the place where medieval stuff happens. Right now to swords and armor and jousting contests. Torres expect a little bit of a night'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 ordnance, 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 where 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 the 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'll 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 hunted. 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.
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 be headed 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 tower green, sometimes with her head, tuck 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. After 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 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's 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 known ghost stories on this journey into the past because they have been discussed in previous episodes. Battles 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 Bolin'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 re-entered in the restored chapel, but it's much more difficult to re-berry 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 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. This episode was made possible by Mint Mobile. You know when you discover a new binge-worthy show or a song that you bump on repeats and you have to share it with your friends so that they can experience just how awesome it is? That's kind of what it feels like when you discover that Mint Mobile offers premium wireless for $15 a month when you purchase a three-month plan.
It's such an awesome deal, there's no way that you can keep it to yourself. One of our senior producers over here at Grim and Mild set up her Mint Mobile accounts all by herself, and by skipping all of that in-store stuff, she was able to take advantage of a much better price compared to other wireless providers. All of their plans come with unlimited talk and text plus high-speed data delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. And you can even use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and bring your phone number along with all your existing contacts.
To get this new customer offer and your new three-month premium wireless plan for just $15 a month, go to mintmobile.com. That's Mint Mobile.com. Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at mintmobile.com. $45 up from payment required equivalent to $15 per month.
The new customers on first three-month plan only, speed slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan, additional taxes fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. Victoria moves in so many ways. This vibrant city on the Pacific Ocean is flavored by a rich culinary scene and deep history.
So roll a hidden alleyway or a colorful garden. Explore an ancient rainforest or a kleptic or gallery. Discover a Victoria that never stands still. Visit us at tourismvictoria.com.
Everyone has heard about the Ravens. 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 blackbirds, 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 Raven Master 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. 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 meats 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. The four of fee, of course. And her successor, James 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 Cops, 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 a 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 the hope of padding 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 Cops, 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 snakes' 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. 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 field archway leading into the tower. Terrified for his own safety, the guard raced 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 Mankey, with research by Jamie Vargas and music by Chad Lawson. I have a confession to make, just like you, I do not like ads in podcasts, but thankfully we create an ad-free version of this show. It's available on Apple Podcasts and Patreon, and it's 100% ad-free. Pick your platform, sign up for the community, and once you're in, not only do you get ad-free episodes, but you'll also get weekly mini episodes called Lore Bites.
It is a bargain for all of that ad-free storytelling and a great way to support the show and the team behind it. And you can learn more about the pricing and the features all over at lorepodcast.com. And of course, lore is much more than just a podcast. There's the book series available in bookstores and online and the television show on Amazon Prime.
Learn more over at lorepodcast.com. And you can also follow this show on threads, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button. And when you do, say hi.
I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.