After Dark: Myths, Misdeeds & the Paranormal - The Paris Morgue's Dark Story

Episode Date: February 29, 2024

Citizens of Paris in the 19th century could stroll down to the Morgue to try to identify the unknown dead or to gawp at celebrity murder victims. Though its most famous resident of all was perhaps not dead at all...Our guest today is the marvellous Cat Byers, who is a writer, photographer and historian based in Paris. She’s currently finishing a PhD on the nineteenth-century morgues of Paris and New York. Get ready for a story full of poignant humour, Donald Trump, and party hats. Edited and produced by Freddy Chick. Senior Producer is Charlotte Long.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code AFTERDARK sign up at https://historyhit/subscription/ You can take part in our listener survey here.

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Behind the Gothic Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, where the five-hour coronation of Napoleon took place on the 2nd of December 1804, is a garden. These days it's peaceful, a sanctuary for tourists. But in the 19th century, this was the location of the Paris Morgue. On busy days, the space outside was the place to be. Old ladies sold waffles to children in the queue, and a macabre buzz of excitement filled the air whenever a morgue wagon rolled by. Inside the morgue itself, there was a large hall with a series of gigantic panes of glass at one end. The crowd pressed against them as if these were the windows of one of Paris' famous department stores. But instead of gawping at the latest

fashions, they were looking at corpses. Two rows of six bodies laid out on slabs, completely naked. A gentle stream of icy water falling onto each of them to delay the ravages of death. Hello and welcome to After Dark. We are talking this episode about the Paris morgue. Now, I don't know about you, Anthony, but I hadn't heard of this before. I don't know how we hadn't heard of this. Paris catacombs, sure, sure. So our guest today is not talking about the Paris catacombs, but she is a Paris cat.

She is. Cat is. Very good. Nice. good nice nicely done I'm pleased by myself cat bias is you are a historian working on a PhD all about the Paris morgue and other international morgues we'll get into that you research just sounds absolutely fascinating so you work on crime scene photography am I right I think in thinking that you are a photographer as well that you do some of your own photography. Is that right? Yes, I do. Although not of crime scenes, of food.

I worked in food before I got into morgues. So yeah, there are some overlaps between food photography and morgue photography that you wouldn't expect. I mean, we need to talk about. Absolutely incredible. So we're going to talk about the Paris morgues. Just give us an overview of what they are, because I had no idea that they existed. Yeah, so basically the first ever modern morgue was established in Paris in 1804. And that basically became the model for morgues around the world.

The inspiration for starting it, they'd had versions of the morgue or a morgue in Paris for hundreds of years. It was essentially a basement where bodies that were found in the streets or in the river were kind of just piled up on top of each other. And if someone had gone missing, you could just go and look through this grate and see if you could recognise your cousin. So this was what was there before? Yeah, before the morgue. So this is we're talking from like kind of the 1400s onwards. And then for a couple of reasons, mostly to do with massive population growth in the kind of just before the 19th century. And then also kind of a change in policing and there's more interest in surveillance and kind of modern policing techniques and this interest in knowing who was who and who was in the city. They established the first ever morgue in 1804.

Shall I tell you what they're not? Shall I tell you what the morgue is not? It is not the catacombs, right? It is not the catacombs, right? It is not the catacombs. Because we started this with producer Freddie and history hit Beth talking about the catacombs

which were doing the rounds on TikTok. Like apparently they were having this viral moment on TikTok. Can you tell us a little bit about what the catacombs are and what they're not and how they're different from the morgue? Just for anyone who's coming

to this topic via TikTok. Yeah, so I mean, the morgue is fresh for anyone who's coming to this topic via TikTok. Yeah, so, I mean, the morgue is fresh dead. I'm going to put it that way. So, yeah, thank you. Basically, the morgue is people who've just very recently died and are being put on display for the purpose of identifying people. The catacombs is where the bones of over 6 million Parisians are stored. So the catacombs, essentially that space was previously a quarry

from when Paris was being built. And they had to empty out the cemeteries in the kind of mid-1700s because they were getting overcrowded and various different reasons. And so they put them all down there, basically. And then it became an attraction itself eventually. And they made these sort of, I don't know if you've, have you been to the catacombs? I actually haven't.

Oh, that's great. I went on my birthday one year. It's fantastic. Oh my God. Obviously. That's an ideal birthday present. It really is very much on my to-do list. I'm really interested in people visiting these sites

because something that's come up in the notes that we're going to talk through is this idea of dark tourism. And this is quite a modern term but it really can be applied to more historic visiting can't it and the morgues and I would say the catacombs as well kind of fall into that category so can you explain to us what dark tourism is? Yeah absolutely so I mean dark tourism as a concept I think the phrase has only been coined relatively recently but it's this idea of visiting dark sites or places where deaths or mass murder or genocide in some cases occurred. And people often who have discussed the morgue sometimes refer to it as a dark tourism site

because people used to go there to see the bodies. And it was a fun activity. It was the best free theatre in Paris. And it used to draw in enormous crowds. You could get up to 40,000 people a day when there was a popular body on display. So, sorry to interrupt you, Kat, but what constituted a popular body in this period? Are they celebrities?

Are they people who've died in particularly gruesome ways? What is the attraction? So basically, the morgue kind of coincides with the rise of the tabloid press as well. So there would be a murder written about in the press and they would say that the body was on display in the morgue kind of coincides with the rise of the tabloid press as well. So there would be a murder written about in the press and they would say that the body was on display in the morgue or a suicide or something like that. And people would read about that and then go to the morgue to see the body.

So it's kind of a bit like living in a real life crime novel in that you could go and it would also be serialized. You know, the updates, have they found anybody? Have they found a potential murderer or anything like that? Are there any updates in the case? And then the trial perhaps would be serialised as well. So, yeah, essentially there would then be these kind of popular bodies that people would read about in certain cases throughout the period

and there would be an absolute rush on the morgue of everyone going to see them. We come up against this so often on After Dark where we think this concept of true crime or the interest in true crime is a modern phenomenon where people have been drawn to these things and it says something about our own time, it says something about the times we live in.

But actually, what we have found over and over again is that this is, as long as there's been people, there's been an interest in how people are dying. And the more gruesome, the more interesting. And this seems to really encapsulate that in a very, you know, cheek by jowl kind of way. So tell us, when did it open? What is the context of the Paris morgue

officially coming into place? It's the beginning of the 19th century, right? Yeah, so there's actually two Paris morgues. They kind of blend together. So it first opened in 1804. As I said, it was kind of originally born out of this weird basement prison space. And then it was formalised and they created this morgue in 1804. As I said, it was kind of originally born out of this weird basement prison space. And then it was formalized and they created this morgue in 1804. But after 60 years, the population

had then grown and grown again, and it was just too small. And there was also very limited kind of scientific and forensic facilities at that point. And then they decided to build a new one. And this is also coinciding with Osman kind of bulldozing, bulldozing, not technically the word, but like half of Ildil-e-Siti. And so then they built a new one, which is also coinciding with Ousmane kind of bulldozing bulldozing, not technically the word but like half of Ile de la Cité and so then they built a new one which was much much bigger which was just under Notre Dame and that was in 1864 and that lasted until 1907. Do people

pay to go in and see these bodies? No, it was free. You'd charge, wouldn't you Maddy? Absolutely. Absolutely free. And it was listed in attractions in the newspaper alongside the Louvre and other places so it was like these are the opening hours go check it out

so presumably if it was free there's a real diversity in the kinds of people who are going to this space that it's all classes of society all genders, all ages potentially everyone in the city is coming and visitors to the city as well to come and see this yeah absolutely everybody so you would have all classes of society, all ages there would be children in the city is coming and visitors to the city as well to come and see this. Yeah, absolutely, everybody.

So you would have, like you say, all classes of society, all ages. There would be children in the morgue and, yeah, tourists. It was a very, very big tourist attraction. So people would come from abroad if they were visiting Paris and pop in to see the bodies.

It was like an unmissable sight because there was nowhere else like it. And did Parisians just rock up? Well, like, obviously people are coming, but, you know, if you just popped out of your Just a Saturday afternoon activity. I'd go and see the dead. Yeah, why not? Yeah, well, I mean, absolutely.

It's a thing to do. I think obviously people also did go to try and identify the dead. So it did have a very important civic function. But there was plenty of people who just went for a big day out. Probably most people, I'm imagining, that who just went for a big day out. Probably most people, I'm imagining, that most people went for the tourism day out element

or was it far more functional than that? I think, I mean, it's hard to know numbers of exactly how many people were going for War Purpose but it was a very much a functional municipal site. So especially bodies that were, again, less popular. So obviously when they had these huge crowds, it would be a lot of people would be coming because they'd read about it but there were plenty of people who went to identify somebody because the problem in this period as well is that we've got this massive population

growth and there's also a lot of people coming into Paris to perhaps work in sort of labouring jobs or industrial jobs and they don't have strong social ties so if they die in the streets or in the river it's hard to immediately identify them so you need a site these people can be brought to and then identified so the morgue is sort of reflecting that huge societal change that's going on it's a good mirror for that something that's coming up for me is this kind of ethical issue so really the morgue has these two almost opposing functions really on the one hand it's administrative it's the way that people can identify people they potentially know and love who've died and then

on the other hand it's people just coming for a saturday afternoon activity anthony clearly i was not alive in paris in 1804 whatever whatever rumors you've heard are entirely untrue. Looking phenomenal for that. You look fantastic. Thanks very much. Amazing. Yeah, we'll get to your skincare in a minute. Were there issues? Did people see it as being potentially unethical to go and gawp at these dead people? I mean, absolutely. Throughout the period, there were discussions that would, you know, kind of peak

and then go down again of people saying that it was wrong to expose the bodies. And also one of the main concerns was that it would inspire criminal activity so that people would go and see the bodies. I can't imagine why it would inspire criminal activity, but there was this fear, especially for children and people, younger people going or people from the kind of like labouring classes. They obviously always had these fears in the period about sort of degeneracy

and there was all these kind of social ideas. And yeah, there were fears that it would, and that was essentially why it closed. Because they thought that it was actually no longer appropriate to expose the dead. I mean, it makes total sense, that fear about the fact that it might provoke kind of theatrical crimes as well. You know, you think just across the channel in the 1880s,'ve got the jack the ripper killings in white chapel and that kind of

the theatricality that comes with that not only in terms of how those bodies are treated those poor women but also the sort of audience reaction and there are wax works made recreating some of the crime scenes and things like that and you can see how that anxiety presumably existed in paris as well in the 19th century. And I know it's a little bit later, we're talking slightly earlier here, but that fear that, as you say, the word sort of degeneracy, that there might be a prompting of criminal activity,

criminal tendency, I suppose, that maybe that kind of having bodies and particularly murders on display might prompt more similar crimes or worse crimes even. Yeah absolutely and it's interesting you say about you know across the channel because you'd often find English writers or Anglophone writers talking about the morgue and being like oh it's so French and they're so you know they're so macabre we would never do that here and then they would all go to Paris on holiday and go to the morgue. But there was very much this judgment

from outside of France of it being a real, yeah, macabre activity. And one of those examples is Charles Dickens, right? That just doesn't surprise me at all.

It makes perfect sense. It fits in with the image that we have of Dickens. Can you tell us a little bit about any visits that he may have taken? Oh, I mean,

he was just a big fan. He was a big morgue fan. He went christmas day one year yeah real real festive activity from charlie yeah he looks a bit of christmas death he does yeah for the writer that's so associated with christmas and a very kind of what is now quite a chocolate boxy christmas that's an interesting thing for him to be doing on christmas day yeah he's there writing about chocolate boxes but in reality he's looking at dead bodies. I think he once wrote that he was drawn by an invisible force to the morgue, which is

an excuse. He just went. Yeah, so he's a big fan. Quite a lot of writers. Edgar Allan Poe, obviously, the original goth boy. He was a big fan. Émile Zola, the French writer, wrote a book called Théry de Racan, and the morgue features in the book.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, and it'sérèse Arcand and the morgue features in the book. Oh yeah! Yeah, and it's got a great description of the morgue and how sort of the bodies and how kind of visceral they are. And this was also in the period before refrigeration, so they really are, the bodies are very much decaying. It's in the period when the ice, there's still water. That ice water is quite gruesome,

right, isn't it? I mean, I know it's just, but the description of trickling ice water is quite gruesome, right, isn't it? I mean, I know it's just... But the description of trickling ice water is something really unsettling about that. You can hear us. It's the audible thing of that ice trickling over the dead bodies. There's something to be said as well about the fact that these bodies are naked. Presumably, for most 19th century people,

naked bodies are not something that you're encountering all of the time. Is this part of the appeal to go in? It's almost like naked attraction now. But a really morbid version. Is this a reason why people are going? I'm never going to see naked attractions. I'm so sorry. But yeah, so they had a small cloth covering the groin.

And towards the end of the period, they did start to display them clothed because I think, again, they were like, this is a bit weird. So there was definitely a voyeuristic element of the period they did start to display them clothed because I think again they were like this is a bit weird. So there was definitely a voyeuristic element of the morgue so a lot of people wouldn't have seen a naked body especially if you have young people going to the morgue this is a chance to see someone naked. So there's a very weird sexual side to the morgue as well

that's quite grim. Well, Kat has very kindly provided us with some imagery, which I think it's probably time we discuss. So, I mean, help me here, Maddy, but I'll start off. What we have, we're looking at a group of relatively well-dressed people on the right-hand side of the picture, not exclusively, but predominantly. And then on the left-hand side, gosh, it really is

like it's a shop. It's big open window panes. And beyond the window panes then are these bodies that are laid out on, look like sun loungers to me, but obviously that's not what they are. And then above them, and this is the really interesting thing in a way, are there, I presume that's their belongings, what they were found in. Yeah, so the clothing was hung on hooks behind the bodies. And they're not sun loungers, unfortunately. They are black marble slabs. Black marble? The French are so classy.

So chic, even in the morgue. So it's kind of, it's like dissection tables, essentially, the same kind of idea. And they would have, you know, the water would drain off them. And this is an image from Harper's Weekly. I think it's 1879, this picture. And as you can also see, there's children there, right at the front row. There's a railing to stop people getting too close to the glass. You can't quite press up against it.

That is really remarkable about the clothes and the belongings being hung up. And I guess that's something that, you know, we're talking about all these people from different parts of society visiting, but also, of course, the dead are from all different walks of life. And you're kind of deconstructed when you're naked. There's not really anything readable potentially on your body. I suppose there'd be things like illnesses or injuries that you might be able to guess at someone's occupation or at least the mode of their death but the fact that they then have their belongings with them that's a very clear message to the onlookers of who that person was in life that they they're not dehumanized to the extent you might imagine being laid out on a slab completely naked that there's i don't know whether it's a positive thing or not but there's just so much information being given there about who they are for better or worse is that something that people would be aware of do you think people would read those and say oh look at that person that's a relatively wealthy person who's died look at his new waistcoat that he's got hanging up or look at that person with her tattered skirts you

know would would there be a sense of being able to read who the person was from this? There would, for sure. And the thing is, is that the majority of bodies actually did come much more from what were called the popular classes or, you know, the dangerous classes. And there occasionally you would get a more affluent body and that would be obvious from the clothing.

But the majority were from a specific class which is kind of a contrast to the crowd which like we say is all classes of society and the clothing was one of the major ways of identifying people as well so exposing the bodies actually wasn't the most effective form of identification you can see from the records that actually it wasn't yeah really wasn't that effective But clothing and photography later in the period, these all really helped identify. And also investigations, so police investigations would help as well.

But the clothing's really interesting and they still have swatches of some of it in the archives. There's still little pieces. And they used to also, at the entrance of the morgue, there was a kind of a glass cabinet. And so if there were certain items that were really helpful with identifications, for example, a handkerchief with initials on it,

they would also be displayed there. So especially after the body had gone, after the body, by gone, I mean, decomposed too much to be put on display and buried, they could keep certain items like that. So there were bodies that could be identified. Yeah, and the clothes would be kept for a while. And then the clothes were sold at auction for a bit as well. Because hugely valuable. Yeah, and the clothes would be kept for a while. And then the clothes were sold at auction for a bit as well.

Because hugely valuable. Yeah, and also just, yeah, they raised money then for the assistance publique. It says so much about the actual value of material things. And I don't mean necessarily textiles, but just objects in the 19th century that you are only, especially if you're part of, as you say, the lower classes, that you would have a limited number of items that you owned that you would have on your person and they would be the things that people would recognize as being yours because there'd be so few of them and you would use them all the time

that's absolutely incredible you spoke a little bit there about the the police in relationship to the morgue and how a lot of these displays are used as a way of investigating crimes, trying to identify people. Can you tell us a little bit about how the police worked with the morgue? Are they running the morgue? Are they just popping in like these tourists and using it as a resource? How does that relationship work? So the morgue was run by the police and it was very much a policing building. So in the records when they're talking about setting up the morgue, they say that the purpose is to identify civil status of people. So it is part of this larger movement in this period of wanting to know who everybody is. And so obviously as well, because the morgue had very many victims of sudden death and accidents, but also of murders and crimes. The police really did do a lot of investigations at the morgue and there was specific rooms for police investigations,

also for autopsies. So that was a very big thing that they were developing in this period, that a lot of autopsies would take place at the morgue. And are those happening on display? No, no, they're kind of behind the scenes. So the display room of the morgue and the place where the public come is kind of, I guess, the other front of the morgue. And then the back of the morgue is vast. In the second morgue, anyway, there's an amphitheatre for teaching. They used to hold forensics

classes. So there was also a relationship between the morgue and the medical school. So they would teach forensics classes there. And then there were all sorts of different rooms. There was a courtyard for photography. Can I ask you, you hinted earlier that there was a point at which the bodies were no longer fit to be on display what was that point? When they decomposed

too far to be recognisable I mean To be too far to be unrecognisable but that's quite far

I mean yeah again it depends on the time of year in terms of decomposition obviously it doesn't always it changes depending on the weather and depending on temperature where the body's been found if you've been in the river of year in terms of decomposition obviously doesn't always it changes depending on the weather

and depending on the temperature where the body's been found if you've been in the river for three weeks yes you know I've seen photographs of those bodies

you're not you're not going to do very well from the 19th century yeah wow yeah in the archives no I wouldn't recommend looking at them

but yeah so you would have when it was the cold water situation you'd probably have two to three days days but then once fridges came you'd probably have two to three days. But then once fridges came in, you might have up to three weeks because they would just freeze them and then wheel them back out again.

They actually had little wheels, bring them in and out on. And they did also occasionally, again, with like a popular body, replace body parts. So there was a woman who was, I know it just keeps doesn't it gifts that keeps on giving there was a woman who was found cut into pieces the case was literally called the woman cut into pieces and her head had started decomposing and they replaced it with a wax work of her head of her own head of her head yeah to that's to try and they did identify her in the end so it did work yeah Jean-Marie Lamange. Yeah, she'd been murdered, obviously. So in a way, these sources lead us down lives that would otherwise have been lost, despite the fact that we have to come across them in such a gruesome way.

Absolutely. And so many of them remained lost and still are lost because a huge number of people were never identified. I mean, there were hundreds and hundreds of bodies in the morgue every year and a significant portion were never identified. There was a statistic saying that I think one in every 5,000 Parisians ended up in the morgue at one point, which is quite a lot of people. And yeah, a huge number were never identified. Kat, you talked about the photography.

Maddy, do you want to chat us through one? There's a picture here that Kat has given us. So Maddy, if you describe what you're seeing and then we'll get Kat to explain exactly what's happening. Okay, so this is a black and white photograph. It looks to me that it's maybe taken, I don't know, around the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th century, judging from the clothes.

There are three men in the picture standing up who to my knowledge they look alive although we have done a lot on Victorian death photography so I'm never sure in this period and then there is another figure who is presumably the dead person who is in a sort of reclining position on some kind of looks almost like a hospital bed or the sun loungers previously mentioned. There's a camera. One of the men to the left of the scene is setting up and working a camera. And there's what looks to be a wooden stick that is running. It's being held up by one of the other men. And it's running from the camera to the head of the dead person.

Whether it's a measuring stick or something to kind of hold the body in position isn't really clear. There are letters labelling each of the figures. There's A, B and C under the three living men, which presumably refers to a little chart that tells us exactly who these individuals are. And the whole scene, I should have said, is taking place in what looks to be a courtyard. I'm guessing this is at the morgue. Kat, tell me how wrong I am. You are absolutely correct. So this is the courtyards of the morgue and this is the process of a body being

photographed so the image is from approximately 1900 and as we can see there is a body laid out on i'm going to call it a wheelie bed can't remember what the actual term is but it basically has a a rotating the back the angle of the the back can be oh yeah i see that can be moved yes like a hospital like a hospital bed or a sun lounger very similar to a sun lounger i don't know if he's getting a tan in the image but yes if you're dead it's a pretty good question we should ask a scientist. Doctor? Sorry, sorry, sorry. Tangent, tangent.

If you know the answer to that, do write in and tell us. Tanning. Do the dead need SPF? Oh God, it's just going to be more social pressures, isn't it, to be tanned when you die. Anyway, sorry. Good looking corpse and all that. Anyway. Yeah, so this is, they started photographing the bodies routinely.

And the police were some of the earliest adopters of photography in general, especially in France. And so this is the police that are taking these images and they would then paste them in the morgue registers and they would display them at the front. And so the bodies, by taking photographs of the bodies, they were effectively immortalized. So despite the fact the body itself would decompose and then be buried you could identify someone for a long time after after they were no longer there one of my favorite two of my favorite facts about photography one is that in the registers you can see them trying out different techniques so you can see them the backgrounds change and the kind of you know you can see the body's strapped down there. So these things are, they're trying out different techniques.

And there's one period where a lot of the bodies are wearing hats, which I just refer to as the hat phase. Are they the hats that they come in dead with? Oh, they are the hats that they come in. Is it like there's a store box of lost property? It's not like a good party hat city. They're not just like... Oh, God.

Wow. I thought it was just like novelty hats. Like Emily in Paris Berry. John T. Angle. I had weird images in my head just then. party hat cities they're not just like wow i thought it was just like novelty hats like emily and paris berry no they're not exactly i have weird images in my head just then right this makes far more sense right so the hats that they came in with but for some reason there's a lot of hats and some of them are quite elaborate with the idea obviously that if you knew someone with a hat in life it might be easier to identify them than death yeah their hat yeah but it really is there's a lot of hats in this one um And how long does the hat phrase last for?

I mean, there's quite a lot of them in the 1880s. You're seeing a fair few hats in that decade in the registers and then it just kind of fades, you know, they fade the hats out. Yeah, so that was clearly, they were trying a new technique. They also used to do things to the bodies to make them look more alive. So they would put sort of like, I guess, of like vastly on the lips they would sometimes put in fake eyeballs so you can also kind of see sometimes when the eyes look like they're really pinging open and you're like that's not that's not real eyes and they also so they were still

in this period trying to establish ways of kind of filing the photographs especially if you don't know who the people are how are you going to you know, how are you going to find the photograph within the collection? And they came up with this technique, which was that they filed the photographs according to famous people of the time. So you would go to the morgue and say, I mean, the equivalent would be going to the morgue

and being like, so I'm looking for my cousin. He looks a bit like Donald Trump or something like that. And then they would be like, oh, go look at the Donald Trump folder. And then find a photograph. I would love to see what the Paris morgue Donald Trump folder looks like. I know, I don't know why that's the first person that came to mind. But I was like, who does everybody know the face of? Yeah.

Wow. So that's a fun. And that speaks back to the wax work thing where so many wax works in that period and even today are made of recognizable people and in the morgue they're sometimes rarely being used to represent people who aren't known there's something so interesting there about recognizability and invisibility of people especially of lower classes who've slipped from the historical record, even slipped from the records

or didn't exist in any records, even in their own time when they die. It's so interesting. Yeah, I mean, a big part of the morgue is this anonymity. Yes. And it reflects the anonymity in this period in the city

because, like I said, there's this huge influx of new people and we're entering into this period where it's much more possible to be anonymous in the city. And that also, you know, there was a lot of fears around that, about anonymity and crime, but also, you know, loneliness

and all these kinds of things in that period. And the morgue is such a reflection of that. And the bodies, even though they are theoretically identifiable with clothing and things like that, they also are kind of neutral in an odd way they can represent anybody because there's no yeah a lot of them are never identified i think that's the perfect place to have a little break when we come back we are going to be talking more about this idea of anonymity and recognizability in the world. Frosty is the ultimate summer refreshment. And not because it's cool and creamy and made with fresh Canadian dairy.

It's also refreshingly cheap. Just 99 cents until July 14th. It's a treat for you and your wallet. Catherine of Aragon. Anne Boleyn. Jane Seymour. Anne of Cleves. Catherine Howard.

Catherine Parr. Six wives, six lives. I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb, and this month on Not Just the Tudors, I'm joined by a host of experts to tell the stories of the six queens of Henry VIII, who shaped and changed England forever. Subscribe to and follow Not Just the Tudors from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. The great river Seine that flows through Paris holds many sad secrets. One of them is the identity of the young woman who was fished out of the water near the Louvre Museum sometime in the 1880s.

Who was she? How had she died? At the time, no one knew. And so the story goes that she was taken to the Paris morgue. When the pathologists saw her, they were struck by the expression on her face. It was so different from the other corpses they'd seen before, so serene. Had this unknown woman of the Seine seen something in the moment of death that lies beyond the veil? They carefully poured plaster over her face and made a death mask to capture that ineffable look. The death mask took on a life of its own. It spread around Europe, becoming a must-have piece of home decor for all poets and

writers. It even found its way into the workshop of a Norwegian toy maker in the 1950s, who was building the world's first CPR doll. And so the unknown woman of the Seine transformed into Rescue Annie, the woman who has the most kissed lips in history. So Kat, we were talking about anonymity before and the fact that lots of the bodies that made their way to the Paris morgue were people who were never identified and certainly people who weren't recognised to begin with when they arrived there. Now, Rescue Annie, or the Unknown Woman of the Seine,

is possibly one of the most recognisable faces in the world now because she is the face of the CPR doll. I think it's so fascinating for so many reasons, this story, but it's nice to think that some good has come from what was presumably a lonely death, a tragic death, and the life of a young woman about whom we know relatively little, if anything at all. Is this the most cited story that you come across in your research to do with the Paris morgue? Is Rescue Annie someone who comes up again and again in your research? She definitely comes up again and again

in terms of how people might have heard of the morgue. So if they have heard of it, obviously a lot of people haven't, they may have heard of it through this story or they may have heard the rumour that the doll was based on a woman that had drowned and ended up in the Paris morgue. So the likelihood of this woman that the mask was based on

having drowned and ended up in the morgue is pretty unlikely because if you've been in the river for a while your face probably doesn't look that unlined and serene. So it's most likely that the mask is actually modelled on a living woman. And then the lore.

Stop it. Yeah. And then the lore. I mean, does she look like she's been in the river for a while to you? No, I hadn't even thought about that though. Yeah, so. She doesn't even look particularly dead. No.

And obviously there's so much about her expression. Now that you've said it. Yeah, exactly. Now you think about it, doesn't really look like a dead face. But she does, there were plenty of women who drowned and ended up in the morgue. So in that sense, she does kind of represent a lot of real women. And I think also the stories that built up around her, this tragic death. And there's one story that's kind of about that she was abandoned by a lover.

And one story that she was pregnant. And there's one story that's kind of about that she was abandoned by a lover and one story that she was pregnant. All these different sort of tragic tales that very much encapsulate when we think of 19th century Paris and tragedy and these things. So she very much represents real stories. But that actual face being having ended up in the morgue is unlikely. I also can't find her in the records, so there's no evidence of her in the morgue registers that were kept. But it's a fantastic story and it's a really interesting way into the morgue and it's an interesting example of how this institution influenced so many different things that we don't even realise. I mean

like you're saying that it inspired all these artists and these writers and everything, and so many roads lead back to the morgue. It also says so much about us and what we need from this morgue, what we need from death, what we need from the history of death, and we need stories to placate our own fears, and we need it to make sense, and we need it to make sense and we need it to we need to mean something and so by

giving rescue yanni all of this backstory and this tragic death we somehow bizarrely comfort ourselves by saying but look there's a legacy she lives on despite the especially the fact that she becomes the cpr doll who you know you do cpr and so on in the hope that they will live and that line between life and death and the sort of artifice of the doll there's so much there about like imitation about liveliness about being still and being death that's uncanny to human beings and I think she is uncanny, but I think she's hopeful. Do you agree, Kat? Yeah, I think also something about being remembered. So obviously this idea that people died unidentified and no one ever knew who they were, she represents this idea of being like, just because we don't know who you are

doesn't mean you're not remembered. Doesn't mean that people aren't thinking about you and they don't remember you. And like you say, that you have this legacy. So there's something in that as well. And even something in the fact that people have tried so hard to identify her yeah and that it's not you're not just immediately forgotten and i think about this sometimes with the morgue in that so many people weren't identified but it doesn't mean that nobody ever remembered them you know they had

family they had friends they had colleagues they had people in their lives so even if nobody knew what happened to them and they were never identified, that doesn't mean that they were entirely forgotten. There are still people that would have thought about them, there are still people that would have talked about them. And so they're not forgotten forever in that sense. You talk about your research and the morgue was such tenderness, really. And I suppose I have two questions. First of all, what is it like to live with this research and to do it on a daily basis?

You know, you're working towards your PhD on this. It's something that hopefully you'll continue to work on afterwards. I want a book. Yeah, we need the book. But also, what did the morgue mean to people in 19th century Paris? Were they all just full of morbid curiosity? Were they all strangely obsessed with death in a way that we aren't now? Or can we be more generous in our understanding of how they

understood the morgue? I think it's very human to be fascinated by death and taboo and, you know, even like you're saying about the bodies being naked i think all these things are very human fascinations that have endured as long as they have been humans so i think in that sense i don't think this is a particularly rare idea that people would want to go to the morgue i think if it was open today we would i mean we would all definitely go but i think a lot of people exactly coming to you from the morgue but i think that a lot of people would go. And I think obviously there was a different relationship to death in the period and they were closer to it in lots of ways than we are today. But I think it's human in that way. And I think, you know, we watch true crime documentaries and we listen to true crime podcasts and all these kinds of things. kinds of things how different is that to reading about a murder in the tabloids and going to the morgue to see the body you know or going to you know body worlds exhibition these things are not that different it's just a different way of doing it and now we have the distance of technology and there's a bit of a gap and you know obviously we don't go and see live executions anymore

but i don't think it's so different i think it's very human and i think also like we're saying with the morgue and it not just being a morbid and macabre place lots of people did go to try and identify somebody yes and i think even when we're thinking of these popular bodies and these huge crowds some of them did maybe go just because it was the place to go and it was a thing to see but a lot of people may also have gone because they were like maybe I can help you know and some of the most popular bodies were say children that were on display who had been found and there were you know people were writing about like we want to find them we want to find out who they are why can't we figure out who these children are we need you know we need to find their next of kin so it wasn't just that

everyone was being I don't know just exposing them for the sake of entertainment. There was genuinely a desire to try and reunite these people with their families and put them to rest. I hadn't even thought about the fact that children would have been displayed. Of course, that's part of it, but it just doesn't your mind, or my mind didn't go there. But one of the things I don't

buy, just on what you're talking about, is when a lot of people talk about public executions in the 18th century, let's say, and a draw they were and you could be looking at up to 100 000 people for really prolific criminals being or in some cases there weren't even criminals um being hanged and you often get this historian or this interview back back view on it where they go i mean i just can't imagine going i, try imagining a bit harder then, because you probably would have gone, because that's what people did. It's just not conceivable to me.

Of course, there were people, even in the context of the time that we're saying, this is a little bit macabre, we shouldn't be going to see this. But the vast majority of people were attending these executions. And in the context of its time, the morgue makes absolute sense that people will go and view these bodies, just as you're saying, as we do when we

watch the latest Netflix documentary on whatever true crime case it is. We can relate to this because we're doing it too in our own various ways. Absolutely. And like you say, we all exist within our own cultural and social context of the period that we live in. So it's impossible for us to say what people will look back on 100 years from now and be like,

that's really weird that they were doing that. And we also, you know, if we exist in the 19th century, we have no idea what we would do. And it's the same with a lot of sort of social ideas

that now we consider to be, you know, really wrong. We don't know how we would, we like to think that we would be on the right side of history, now we consider to be, you know, really wrong. We don't know how we would have, we like to think that we would be on the right side of history, but we have no idea. You know, we have no idea the upbringing we would have had or the social context around us, the cultural context around us

that might have changed how we would have approached things. I think that's a fantastic note to end on. And I think it's something for people to think about as well, having listened to this, about whether they would go to the morgue if they were in 19th century Paris. Kat, thank you so much for the most fascinating chat. And actually, I feel like I have been to the morgue now. I really do.

Before we sign off, can I give a fact that is in my briefing notes here? Apparently, the Michael Jackson song, Annie, Are You OK?, is about the CPR doll. No, it's not. It is, yeah. Is that really true? Yeah, it actually is a fact that it's true. What was he singing about? She's clearly not OK.

Apparently, I don't know. I think it's something that with the doll, you're not meant to say. I don't know why you say that to the doll. Is it the rhythm? Is it maybe the rhythm of CPR? No, the rhythm is staying alive. Ironically.

That is bizarre. Of all the factoids that we come across on this show, that's up there. Yeah, that's going to stay with me. I'm going to have to listen to that now. I know. I am going to have to listen to it now. And to play us out.

We can't get the rights. Endless facts out of the morgue, I tell you. I'm kind of jealous of your topic. It's absolutely fascinating. Kat, thank you so, so much. Thank you so much for having me. This has been great. Thank you very much. If you've enjoyed After Dark, you can listen to our back catalogue of episodes

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