Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - The Grisly Deaths of Kings & Queens

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Did Henry VIII really have syphilis? Who died from a red hot poker up the bum? And which king was taken down by a school of fish?To learn about the often gruesome ways that our royals have met their doom, Kate gets Betwixt the Sheets with Suzie Edge, TikTok historian and author of ‘Mortal Monarchs: 1000 Years of Royal Deaths’.*WARNING there are naughty words and gory discussions of death in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Thomas Ntinas.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit. For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here. If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - enter promo code BETWIXTTHESHEETS for a free trial, plus 50% off your first three months' subscription.To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely bit of texters. This is Kate Lister, and this is your fair do's warning. Fair news, this is a podcast where we do not avoid the big issues, the difficult issues, and quite frankly, the sensationalist, gossipy and rude issues. But today we are talking about how monarchs have died.

And the first thing I should probably say is that this was recorded before the sad news about Elizabeth II. And then we shelved it away for a more appropriate, time and the time is now, but we are talking about how people have died and some of them met a rather sticky end and you just might not want to listen to that and that's absolutely fine I'll catch you next time. A red-hot poker of the bum, an unfortunate instant with a cannon or just eating too much fish. These are all ways in which former monarchs of the United Kingdom have apparently met their maker. So who's were the most gruesome? Are the stories even true?

And are there any mysteries surrounding the deaths of our royal highnesses? Well, I am ready if you are. Why do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect copies of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up and pushing it. Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, I feel for damn.

Goodness has nothing to do with it, dearie. Hello and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal in Society, with me, Kate Lister. If you've studied any part of British history for more than five minutes, that might have just been on a GCSE, but you'll probably know something about the kings and queens who ruled over this country. You might know some names, you might know some dates, you might know some facts here and there.

But how they died is an altogether different kettle of fish, you know. It's often hushed up. It's not something that's publicly spoken about, but it's a fascinating history. So from William II to Bad King John, Susie Edge, former doctor and historian extraordinaire, is going to walk us through how our monarchs met their maker. Let's go.

So hello, Dr Susie Edge. I'm so happy to see you. How are you? I'm very, very well, thank you. And likewise, it's great to see you as well. I think I've seen what's going on on Twitter and what have you for a long time, so it's really nice to see you. Your baby, though, is TikTok.

isn't it? You've kind of stommed it over on TikTok. I mean, you're doing Twitter is fabulous. You've got a brilliant social media, but you seem to have just got into your stride over on TikTok. Yeah, I think I hit the ground running at a really good time during lockdown when a lot of people were coming onto TikTok. And I did something slightly different as well.

I wasn't dancing in bikinis. Maybe I'd have millions of followers if I did that. But I think not. So I did something a bit different. and yeah, it's really taken off. And sometimes I feel like I do have all my eggs in one basket, but they treat me well, so we stick around. It's a weird one social media, isn't it?

It's because I feel like that way about Twitter because the stuff that I do is sex history and TikTok are very, like, censorious, and I'm still finding my feet with them of like, oh, that's not allowed. Right, like stuff that I would have thought is like PG-13 stuff, and they're like, no, that's banned and I'll get put on the naughty step. Instagram is bad as well. Twitter are the only one.

ones that go, nah, help yourselves. Sometimes I see posts of yours and others as well, the sex history, that sort of thing. And I think, how did that get through? Because I'm so used to, on TikTok, there are things that you just can't say or do in them. Weirdly, though, you talk about death a lot and TikTok just seems to go, yeah, that's okay, as long as everyone's got their clothes on. I seem to get away with it. I did have a sword in the background of one of my videos, which was sheathed.

It just lives in my living room. And I was talking about somebody's guts actually being super. spewed out onto the floor, but the sword was the issue rather than the descriptions that I'm yeah. Some of my videos do go through when I post them. They don't get pushed out straight away. They get taken into a holding area and somebody looks at it and goes, yeah, it's all right and lets me through. That mind is exactly the same. Yeah, it could be several hours. There's like a small group of people going, shall we, shall we let it through? And it's very strange. But I'd love the content of yours that does get through. And your book, Royal Downey,

A thousand years of royal deaths is just fabulous. How did you come to this? How did you come to be studying deaths and royal death in particular? It was all, it happened over a good long time, as often sort of first projects like this really do. They simmer, don't they? But I studied medicine, I was a doctor. Having said that, I'll go back even further

in that I had been put off studying the humanities and history when I was at school because, you know, there's no future in that, is there? You've got to go off and be a doctorate. Yeah, yeah, all the time. It's a big chip that I carry around on my shoulder. But I studied medicine and I worked as a doctor and I was working as a doctor. I was often telling stories. You know, I sit in the tea room telling stories.

In the operating theatre, I'm telling stories about historical amputations and what have you. And people are like, come on, back to what we're doing now. And I'm like, no, I'm going to tell you whilst holding somebody's leg. And they're like, not the time, Susie. So I realised that that was maybe not my audience and that I was writing science. No your audience. Yep. Yeah, totally.

I was writing scientific papers for things. and I was a bit becoming very disillusioned with that. And I thought I want to learn how to research and write in other areas, in other ways. I was still hanging on to this idea that I might be able to study history. And I went along to the history department a couple of times over a couple of decades and said, can I come and join in? And they said, no, you're a medic. Go away and be a medic.

But eventually I got somebody who accepted me and I was able to go and do a master's in modern history. And it was then that I was putting the two things together because there aren't many of us that are doctors and have that interest in anatomy and physiology and all that good stuff and also want to actually study history as well. So yeah, it all came together like that. I think that if you're at the point, you are a trained medical professional and you've got all of the letters proper doctor and you are in an operating theatre holding someone's leg up that's being amputated. And at that point, you're telling stories from history. I think you're a historian. That was the moment. That was the moment that I thought something has to be done.

Yeah, this might not be the path for me. So how did you get into royal death? That's fascinating that. Do you know, this came about because of my kids, because my kids, they're teenagers now, but when they were younger, they were hugely into horrible histories. I didn't stop them, of course. This was the sort of thing where they'd leave the room hours before,

and I'm still sitting watching. But they were really into that, and we used to play games where if we were out and about and we saw a date, I would say, who was on the throne in 14, 15, or whatever? And they were answering really easily, thought this game's a bit dull. So I would then change it into and how did they die? Because I thought that was quite fun. And so I started telling, because there's a lot of really fun,

gruesome stories to be telling eight-year-olds about the royal deaths. And we just started putting them all together and I thought, you know, what, there's some good stuff here. The history of death anyway, like there was that bit on horrible histories, wasn't it? Stupid death so they would just roll out in people that have died in ridiculous ways. I think we are fascinated by it because it's going to be something that happens to all of us. It's a joint experience. But there's Obviously we're all going to die, but being a monarch seems a particularly perilous occupation, at least it was in the past. I mean, we went through him at quite a rate of not. I wouldn't have signed up for it, I don't think.

Uh-uh. No, there's plenty wanted to. And actually, if you had come to the throne by various manner, if somebody before you had been murdered, you were likely to be bumped off yourself. That was more likely for you than anyone else if you'd done it to the person before. It's all lovely now, like the royal family, well, lovely-ish. You know, it's all kind of like opening fates and sort of sending new ships off. But in the past, in the medieval past, not even that medieval past, but it was very Games of Thrones-esque, minus the dragons and the zombies.

But it was ruthless, like you said. It was bumping people off, disposing this person, starting a coup, having an invasion. Not a job I'd want. No, and the stories that were told afterwards were always embellished. They were always made more interesting and more gruesome because they were trying to say something about the person came before. Have you found that then? Because that makes perfect sense, actually. If you are someone that has bumped off someone who had a legitimate claim to the throne, you're going to

talk shit about them. And their death is a particularly good way to do that. You're not going to get to the throne and go, yeah, they were nice, actually. You're going to really amp it up. And did you find cases of, like, famous supposed royal deaths? It was just nonsense. That that didn't happen at all. It was just propaganda. I think the biggest one that everyone comes back to me with is Edward II. So Edward II was So tell me about that, then tell me about Edward II and what the story is about his death. So Edward II was deposed really by his wife and her lover,

supposed lover. That's another kind of story that's added on an embellished, yes, good friend. They deposed and put Edward III his son on the throne. But of course he was very young, so they were ruling for him. So they had all the power at this point. But deposed kings sitting in castle somewhere, they're a threat, not necessarily a threat themselves, because they're under lock and key, but they're a threat because other people can gather around them

and their story and use them to come at you. So they had to get rid of him. And the story goes that he was at Berkeley Castle, he was held down under a door or a table or something like that. And he had a red hot poker shoved up his rear end. And that was the end of him. And the story is told that way because once you lay someone out who's been disposed of in that manner, you can't look at them and tell that's how they died. That's true, isn't it? I would suggest smothering would be just as easy, easier. Yes, there's got to be an easier.

If you were having a meeting with the assassins, we need to find a way that's not going to show a mark on the body, and one person goes, red hot poker up the bum, there has to be more ways than that. It's not top of your mind, is it, when you're coming to, how are we going to do this? You know, we've got all these poisons that we could use and we could smother the chap.

There's lots of ways, aren't there? But no, red hot poker up the bum, that was the one used. I read somewhere that that was part of, because he was almost certainly gay, or at least he had what historians like to call very close friends. What do you think about that? Yeah, I think you're right. This is a representation of his trying to tell that this happened because of his homosexuality. This is where that came from, for sure.

This was a way of showing that this is what happens for that supposed sin, if you get my meaning. So this was a representation of that, yeah. How did he die? Do we know? We don't know. We don't know. There are even...

There are even historians like Mortimer who think that he didn't, that he was... Still with us. And went up... Still with him. Still with us, yeah. He was at pride last week.

Waving his flag. Good lad. He just had to hold on and it came. But yeah, some of the say that he was squirreled away and was off in Europe hiding away and, yeah, I'm not entirely convinced about that either. I'm more inclined to believe

that he was, murdered, but being held down and a red hot poker up the bum, it's fantastical. I learnt that story when I was really young. I remember learning about it at primary school. Obviously, I didn't understand the connotations then. It was just a really gory death, wasn't it? And that's what you learn and that's what you remember. But I think that whilst we're really, really good at looking at newspaper stories or online things now and saying, oh, hang on, why are they writing that? Who wrote that? Who funded that? What's their agenda? We don't tend to do that with those stories from hundreds of years ago, we just look at them and go, oh yeah, that's what happened.

That's what happened. It's always interesting when stories like that circulate, because the fact that they became so widespread still tells us something. The fact that, like, people were willing to go, yeah, that sounds about right, tells us something. Absolutely, yeah. So, I think he was probably bumped off as well. He was too much of a risk. He was probably quietly got rid of, but you're not, finding records for this kind of stuff must be so difficult because you're not going to put it in a letter Dear Assassin, please, could you bump off such and such? How did you struggle with things like that? Because obviously this stuff is done on the quiet, isn't it?

Yeah, it's all, and the papers that I found, things that were written, even in the 20th century, they all have these very, they all have their own agendas as well. So whenever I found something that was written a couple of hundred years later, a few hundred years later, I had to look at that and think, why are they writing that now? And on a very similar vein, I had those sorts of issues with, James the sixth, James the sixth of Scotland, he was James the first of England. Similar story. At the 20th century historians were looking at, you know, to 1960s, were looking at him and judging him because of a, you know, alleged homosexuality again.

So, you know, again, it's coming to all the same thing, isn't it? Those things that were written were written with an agenda, even a few hundred years later. How did he die? How did James die? James' six death was a bit of an odd one. He had so many issues. I remember writing in the book that if he'd gone into hospital now, he would have had a whole trolley full of medical men's. He had so many things going on with him. And in the end, it was probably a pneumonia on top of a TB infection.

But actually, he had so much going on. And he had, I think there might have been some sort of interesting endocrine disorder as well. That's something that I have yet to really dig deep into. And I want to do that. Go on. Tell me why you've got that hunch. What kind of makes you go, ah, about that one? I think, well, going back to all the other issues that were. going on with him. He was, he was known to be very irritable. He was known to have a lot of issues with

his tongue was too large for his mouth and he couldn't sort of, he was dribbling and all these sorts of things that just lead to, you know, again, he was put down as just being a right grump. And I'm not convinced that I think there was something else in the background with this. And also, for me, I've been looking through all of these deaths and trying to, trying to weave themes between them, as you do. Not that's easy over a thousand years, but that was fun to look at. And, of course, I was also looking at the Tudors,

so I was looking at Henry the 8th, I was looking at Mary the 1st. And in different instances, I found research where people have suggested petuitary adenomas or endocrine issues with both of those. I think you can't take them separately. They were father and daughter. So what's the connection?

Again, this is something that I haven't really died, into that far and I want to because I can't see that's a coincidence. And of course, Henry VIII was brother to Margaret, who was James the 60s. And he wasn't a well man, was he, Henry. I mean, he was in his youth. In his youth, he was quite a snack, by all accounts. He was like quite, oh, sexy time. It was like well over six foot and really into sports, like a proper jock.

But then as he got older, like, his health was wretched. Things started to go wrong. Yeah, there's one instance where people like the idea that things went wrong on one day when he was thrown from his horse in a jousting accident and was hit in the head. I've heard that one, yes. Yeah, and he developed a frontal lobe injury, frontal lobe injuries, that's way all the emotions and ability to deal with life. The ability to not control wife's head off of his largely frontal lobe.

Yes, I totally agree that's hidden right in there at the front. And that was injured and he had issues with that. And it does make sense that something like that happened to him and there was this change and suddenly he became this tyrant. But at the same time he'd injured his legs. His legs became ulcerated and didn't heal. I think that that might have been an osteomyelitis. Whenever I mention Henry VIII, I get lots of people shouting syphilis at me.

And whilst I love a bit of syphilis and like to talk about it and like to retrospectively diagnose everybody with syphilis, I and got told off again in the hospital when I was working for suggesting this, even though nowadays it's becoming more prevalent. Yeah, so syphilis, everyone suggests that about Henry VIII, and I'm not entirely convinced about that. Oh, I mean, it is very trendy and a lot of fun for historians to diagnose everybody with syphilis because they're not here to go, hang on.

Yeah. And it's got such like a strange collection of symptoms that could be something else, and it's tricky. So why do you think he didn't have it? I mean, the case for it is that he had these open sores. He was quite erratic. These behaviours weren't great. And he had a lot of sex, obviously.

Why do you think he didn't have it? It would fit, because it would fit in a differential diagnosis, a list of ideas. But when you actually start digging down, we know that Henry VIII's legs were sore. They were a pain to him. They bothered him. But also the gamata of syphilis, the sores that you get with syphilis in that way are not. They're not painful. And so that was one thing.

thing is that Henry the Eighth's body was just belonged to everybody else, didn't it? It was, everybody else is to prod and poke and write about and speculate about. And his contemporary over in France, the King of France, had syphilis, and it was well documented. Everybody knew it. And he went through a lot of mercury, something that Henry the Eighth didn't. Henry the Eighth was really keen on his medicines and his potion. Yeah, it would have been, somebody would have written it down. He had like so many doctors. He had someone his job it was too ripe his bottom for him, the groom of the stole somewhere that someone would have written down Mercury, wouldn't it?

Yeah, and there was a, you know, Henry Day didn't like talking about people talking about his health and his coming death. That was ruled against, you weren't allowed to mention it, even to the king. You couldn't, you know, by the way, I think you're dying. Somebody did in the end come to him and say that, but the last minute, just, oh no, no,

on his death, but no, good. No, you're fine, honestly. You'll be up in about no seconds. See you tomorrow. Yeah, so this, it wasn't really allowed to be mentioned. But at the same time, a lot was written about before the end, if you like. And so we didn't see, we didn't see a lot of mercury use. Mercury, obviously, being the supposed cure for syphilis.

It was used a lot. And he didn't have it in his lotions and potions. So, yeah, I'm not entirely convinced. And also, you know, I think we all love a bit of retrospective diagnosis. I do it myself. Just written a whole book about it. But I am twitchy about it. And the reason I'm twitchy about it is because whenever I make these little videos,

whenever I try and talk about any of these things. People come back to me with comments and they're very, very, very sure of themselves. They say, this person had, this person had this because I know because I have it. And I get into these long reply conversations of, well, yeah, I mean, yeah, okay, you have these symptoms and this person maybe had these symptoms as well. But symptoms are, you know, there are a huge number of diseases and there are only a certain number of symptoms.

You know, if you get a headache, it could be through any number of things happening inside your head or somewhere else. but we're very, very good at saying, well, I have, I don't know, endometeotosis, therefore this is what Mary the first had. And I get twitchy about that. I do, I sort of start, hang on. But of course, you have to start somewhere and our own experiences help guide us in what we think is going on. But yeah, the retrospective diagnosis is good fun, but we have to be careful with it. You've got to be careful with it. You've got to be really careful. I suppose that's one of the good things about studying royal deaths. They definitely died. There's no wiggle room.

around that one. I'm not definitely dead. I'm not going to argue with that one. So even though you've got a medical background and you're quite happy to be in operating theatres where people are having things cut off, in your research around royal deaths, was there any deaths that you found

that even from your background made you go, oh, oh dear, that's grim? I'd love to answer that because I think that in doing so, I won't make myself out to be completely mad, but I'm quite gruesome. I'm quite the gruesome one. What was really grim?

I think the stories of putrefaction and the exploding, dripping kings really... Hold on. Whoa, whoa, whoa, okay, if we're going to go into exploding kings, you're going to have to... Who exploded and when? Okay, so the story of William I first, William the conquerors, a wonderful one. So William the first, it was about 20 odd years after the Battle of Hastings. He was still out there fighting, and he died having his horse reared up, and he fell forward onto his pommel of his saddle.

And inside... The sort of sticky up leather bit. Yeah, yeah. Must be quite a fall. But inside his gut was crushed and... Oh! Yeah, so his bowel was perforated. And that's not something that's going to kill you straight away. Here, nowadays, you'd need an operation.

You'd need a surgeon and he's cyst and all that. You need antibiotics. You need an ICU and you might be okay. But William wasn't the case. He had a monastery, a couple of monks. And he lay there for a good food. few weeks in agony. Oh, that's not nice.

Right. So the bowel is full of all the feces and the bacteria and that's separated from the rest of the body. But when you die or when it's perforated, those mechanisms that separate them are broken down and all those things come out. So the bacteria come out and they go to lunch and they eat everything and they burp and fart and they produce gas. And so things start to get bigger and bigger.

So he swelled up, he swelled up. Then he died and then they couldn't decide what to do with him. So they decided eventually they were going to take him from Rouen, where he was at the monastery, over to Con. And that took quite a while to get him there. There was a lot of faffing. And he just got bigger and bigger. His body just swelled up with all this gas.

And when they tried to push his body into what was a stone coffin, the stone wasn't going to give, but his body exploded and just flew into the air and went over all of the orderlies. And this was during his last ceremony. So they had to just finish really fast and get out of their fast because the smell was so bad. How long had he been dead for by the time they did that? It was a couple of weeks. It was a good few weeks. Oh, so bad. In the early autumn of French autumn.

So yeah, nice and warm, nice in them. Oh. So this is a body that has died because the bowels ruptured internally, which is unpleasant enough. It's then swollen with gases. It's been dead for several weeks and they've tried to wedge it into. were stone coffin. Yeah, that is a great summary. So it just blew up.

It's just exploding. Oh. Went bang, yeah. Do we know that that's true? Do we know that's, or is that kind of propaganda stuff? Again, this is, to me, this is another story. This is another trope because we like to think of our saintly predecessors. They don't decompose.

They don't putrefy. That's not going to happen. But if you're a bad person, if you're not very liked, that's what's going to happen to you after death. So again, this was a king who's certainly. certainly in England was not liked for what he came across and did. And so he was written about as being foul and greedy and this, of course, was going to happen to him after death. He was going to putrefy. He was going to be this horrible, stinking mess because that's what he was in life.

That's what they're saying in this story. And it's a story that we see, again, not quite so fragrant and not quite so explosive, but we certainly hear it with Henry I, his son, had the same issues that he were bringing. He died in France as well, but they were going to bring his body back to England and on the way got caught up in the storms that were stopping everyone crossing the channel that winter. And he lay there waiting and started to drip and the black juices started to drip out at the bottom of his shroud as well. So again, that's the same story. And he was, it was written that he died of a surfeit of lampreys. That's the other thing that kids learn at school that this surfeit of lampreys. He ate too many of them. I've heard that. Yes. So Henry the first,

He was the same. They wanted to portray him as the greedy, gluttonous one. So he ate all these lampreys and he died. And then he was dripping after his death, putrifying and not very saintly. So again, you're right. And to ask, did it happen? Probably, if it did, it was probably embellished somewhat. Are lampreys, they're eels, aren't they?

I'm not very good with seafood. Are they terminal? Is that even a thing that if you eat too many of them that you can die? Is that a thing? There are delicacy in some places. They're eel-like. like jawless things that they clamp onto salmon and I think I'd probably prefer to eat the salmon but people do like them and yeah they're not it's the same as anything isn't it if you're

going to eat too many of them and seafood can be a little bit dangerous to the gut sometimes oh it's yes oh maybe it was like horrendous food poisoning it was more likely to be something like that that happened yeah but the surfeit of lampreys suggests that it's the only time we ever use the word surf it but yeah that's Henry the first did you know that some of literature's greatest characters were real people. It's so fascinating, isn't it, that some of the three musketeers are also based on real soldiers. That Sir Walter Raleigh wasn't all that he's been cracked up to be. Chemist, poets, scholar, historian, courtier, he could have been great in all these different things. And that if your name is Dudley, you better watch your back. For the tutors, each one of

them took something from the Dudleys, either by working with a member of the Dudley's, family, or of course, by having one executed. I'm Professor Susanna Lipskin, and I'm learning all this and much more bringing you Not Just the Tudors twice a week every week. Subscribe now to Not Just the Tudors from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. It's raised a really interesting point. If you're dealing with a complete bastard, like William the Conqueror, who was also known as William the bastard, because he was a bit of a dick, to say the least.

He was very unpopular. these people were. When they've died, there is a certain amount of, and then his body exploded, what a shit he was. But how, if you're dealing with the royal body after death, do you deal with the things that you have to deal with about a decomposing body and try and retain some dignity? Because it's something we're all going to have to do, as horrible as it is. We're all going to pass away, there's going to be decomposition, things are going to happen, blah, blah, blah. But if you're dealing with this kind of saintly, like, ordained by God body, how do you sort of preserve of that not let people think this is a dead body that's rotting away?

So the first thing that you have to do is take out all of those things that we were talking about earlier that cause problems. So the first thing you want to do is open them up and pull out all the guts and all the viscera and get rid of that, bury that nearby, just get rid. Because that's the sort of thing that breaks down really fast. That's where all the bacteria are. And their brain as well. And what you're left with is the carcass that, I mean, to be blunt, We hang meat like that, don't we? It lasts longer. We do.

So that sort of thing you're left with, then things are going to be okay for a while. And then you need to wrap them in things that will keep them from going off. I couldn't think of another way of putting it. I like going on. So they're filled with all these different spices and herbs to make them smell a bit nicer. When Richard the first heart was examined a few years ago,

it was held at, I think it was Ruon. They opened up its little lead coffin that it was held in and they found traces of myrtle and lime and mint that had all been rubbed, it's all been rubbed into it to make it smell a bit nicer and supposedly stop it, again, stop it going off. So basically we're preparing it for the frying pan. We've marinated it.

Yeah, we've marinated it to make it smell a weave it nicer. And then the body itself wrapped in lots of layers of searcloth and wax and what have you. And, you know, wax, wax, waxing searcloth. It works quite well. There was a wonderful description of when Catherine, Catherine Parr's body was found and dug up how in a few hundred years after her death and her burial, that they just found this incredibly well-preserved, very light, white-skinned woman lying there.

They could really see all the detail very clearly because she'd been wrapped in the same way, she'd been wrapped in all this waxy cloth. Who was digging her up? You're not supposed to do that. No, well, Catherine Parr was the only monarch who was buried, I think, away from royal burial grounds and Westminster Stravy and all that sort of stuff. She was at a Seedley Castle in Gloucestershire when she died. And she was buried in the chapel there.

But the castle fell into a bit of disrepair during the Civil War. I think it might have been used by Charles I was a base, but it certainly was attacked and besieged and fell into ruin. So people kind of forgot that she was there. And it was in the 18th century, someone who owned the castle, went out looking one day and thought he'd have a dig around and came across her lead coffin. And rather than say, oh, this is a lead.

coffin that might be Catherine Parr, let's bury her with a bit of dignity. No, no, we're going to open that up and have a good look and a prod and a poke. And then, and he did put her back, but then she was found by a bunch of drunken revelers a few years later who pulled her out, threw her on a rubbish heap where she could be seen. And at that point, she did start to fall apart. Who's doing that on a night out? Who gets hammered and then goes digging in a royal burial ground? Again, it's not the first thing that springs to mind, is it?

Nope, nope, me and my friend did have pasta? Cabab? Right, poor pat and they threw it on a rubbish heap. Yeah, she was just discarded and a few people had a look at a poke. She was gathered up and reburied and has now a nice tomb that you can go and visit and pay your respects, but certainly there weren't respects being paid. The Georgians were particularly good at digging people up and prodding and poking just out of interest. They were really shit at that.

Like, if you speak to any modern archaeologist and, like, you just get onto this subject of what the Georgians in particular did to really valuable finds. They just have this flash in their eyes of fucking bastards. Like, they did it with, like, bog bodies as well. Apparently, there was, like, loads of... They'd excavate these perfectly preserved bodies

dating back to Saxon times and before that. And in the 18th century, they might make them into medicine. Brilliant. Well done, guys. That's fabulous. Silly sods. There you go. So if you ever accidentally dig up the body of a queen, Just phone somebody. Don't put it on a rubbish heap.

Better still don't make a TikTok of it. Tell me some more interesting royal deaths then. Tell me, we've had somebody possibly died from eating too much fish, that lampreys, a weird one. Tell me about who is it who died of dysentery? There was a lot of dysentery. I think, yeah. There was a lot of dissentry.

There was a lot of gushing rear ends. I think that dysentery is a word that's used to, it covers a lot of sins, I think. But, yeah, there were. My favourite of that might be John. actually, because John, again, is a bit of a representation of how we maybe should, how we're told to feel about John. John was a bad king. Everybody hated him and everybody still hates him. And there are some people who try to rehabilitate John, a bit like Richard III, but it doesn't really work. Everyone just agrees that we don't like him. Yeah. So John was on his way to fight. He was near Newark and he felt a little bit ill. Again, there's a story of gluttony. There were peaches. There was wine. There was all this stuff that, I mean,

maybe he shouldn't have been eating all that stuff and he fell ill and died of dysentery a couple of days later. Henry V, he was... So a lot of his army fell to dysentery. You know, we talk about how his troops were... There were so few of them at the Battle of Agincourt compared to the French,

but most of them had died just gushing out of their rear ends in the camps. What is dysentery? It's a diary until you die. Yeah, it's a bloody diarrhoea of... you know, caused by, there are a few different infections. Usually, we call it the fecal oral roots. So somebody will have come into contact with the feces that have this infection

and then they'll prepare food or put their... Wash your hands, kids. Wash your hands. So it passes that way. So in places like military camps, places where there is not the hygiene that we might look for today, that would spread really easily. So we see it now, don't we? We see it in refugee camps and the like.

It spreads through very easy. easily because of those conditions. And so Henry V had lost a lot of his army to dysentery, and he himself succumbed to it as well, although I think he had some other anal problem going on as well. But we don't want to mention that because he was a big warrior king. And this is the chap that we want to hold up as being our big favourite warrior. So we're not going to mention that he had some sort of anal problem. He died of dysentery like many of his troops. Like a warrior, that's what happened to him. What was the anal problem? What's written about that in very small print? We don't. There's not a lot of detail about this, but it was written that he had something called St. Fierke's disease.

And St. Fierke was a patron saint of venereal diseases and weirdly also colorectal conditions. So that could be... There's a saint for everything, isn't there? That's amazing. Isn't there just? Strangely, the saint of taxi cab drivers as well and gardeners, and I'm not... I don't know the connection. She probably just wanted to branch out. It's just like, you've just given me asses and STDs.

Yeah, someone would have gone, but you can have taxis as well. That's all fine. So whatever you do go making a link to those when the internet comes along. But the St. Fierke could have been representing something like an anal, a peri-anal cancer or even an inflammatory bowel disease, something like that. So he could have had that lingering underneath. Because the thing is, his condition lasted a long time. It was long enough for people to say, for his physician,

and this isn't very, this doesn't look very good. We don't really know what it is. Let's get his wife out. So they went back to England and got his wife and brought her back. Catherine, she came to see him. Oh, cheer. So there was enough time. So it wasn't just a couple of days of rushing to the toilet and that's the end.

There was more going on. But we, of course, we want to paint him differently. So we're not going to mention his bomb. No, we don't talk about that. No, he died in battle. It's an absolute, absolute warrior. So what's particularly interesting is when a royal, it's interesting, when anybody dies, but when a royal person, especially throughout history, died, you're dealing

with a shift of power. There are massive vested interests in this. And that changes how people approach this person dying, I suppose, because, you know, it's, how long are they going to hang on for? How long are they going to, I don't know. But have you found cases of monarchs being rushed to their death? I don't mean, like, bumped off by an assassin. I mean, like, they've been lying on the deathbed for an awfully long time, and there's a kind of, like, a, maybe we should just hurry this up a bit. People are waiting. We've got to catch the newspapers. Well, yeah, you're absolutely right there. There's one that I do like to talk about because people, you know, I do like the guts and the blood and the gore. I think we've made that obvious, haven't we?

We have. Sorry. It's been amazing. No, I love, I've loved it. This story's a little bit closer to home because when I say closer to home, it just feels like, you know, we're talking about the 1900s. We're talking about someone who we've seen in photographs, someone who we have seen on film. You know, this is George V. And he was, and he was, he was sick. I mean, he was dying. There's no doubt about that. He had a lung conditions because he had been a lifelong smoker and drinker. He had a lung cancer. He wasn't well. But you can't predict when somebody's going to die. We've tried all sorts of mechanisms and when somebody is terminal, you can't actually say this is going to happen

at 8am tomorrow. It just doesn't work like that. Yeah. But George's physician, called Lord Dawson of Penn, he didn't like the idea of the king, dying at a time that would end up in the red tops, the tabloids, and he didn't want it. He didn't want it to break in these scummy newspapers. He wanted it to come out in the Times. And in order to do that, the King would have to die at a certain time. Lord Dawson, he then told his wife to go and phone the Times. He knew this was coming.

He told her what was going to happen. And he filled up a syringe full of cocaine and morphine. He injected it into the king's neck and finished him off. Now, when I have told this story before... I don't think you're allowed to do that. No, well, this is the thing. I've told this story before, and a lot of people stand up and say, but he was just helping the King.

King would have been in a lot of pain. The King would have been on morphine and cocaine anyway, and he's right, of course he would. But Lord Dawson-The Penn wrote in his diary that this is why he did it. And he was a big proponent of euthanasia from the doctor's point of view. He'd actually stood up in Parliament and made speeches about how doctors should be able to. to determine when people die and do it.

And there should be no imposition from the law. This was about the discretion of the doctors. So he was known for doing this. And so it came as no surprise when his diaries were found in the 1980s. But there's this argument, isn't there, that he was actually just doing him a favour because he was ill and he was helping him along. But you're right, it was actually regicide. It was murder and he bumped off the king.

Wow. That's quite shocking, isn't it? What, okay. Yeah, don't do that. That's definitely morally hazy ground, I think. Although cocaine and morphine, what a way to go. What do you think about, we should probably talk a bit about Richard III, speaking of naughty kings, you need to be rehabilitated. Because his death and what happened afterwards is fascinating. The fact we found him under a car park and the fact that we can exhum, we can get that body and we can do facial reconstruction and all the documentaries are fascinating. Can't do that with other monarchs, can we? is the only one we've been able to do that with? If I had written this book 10 years ago, I would not have had much to say about the Richard the third chapter. He's missing. We think he was buried somewhere in Leicester,

missing in action. There's other stories that he was thrown in a river. There's just, there wasn't much to go on. Philippa Langley obviously had a fair bit to go on, but I didn't. And then there's the idea that he was been knocked off his horse. He didn't have his horse. It was Shakespeare at all as that, didn't he? Then that he was a hack to death after that happened.

There's this idea that he had scoliosis, that he had his spinal deformity. And there wasn't really much to go on. And yet now, this chapter, this, I think, this monarch, I have the most detail. Because we have incredible CT scans, we have carbon dating, we have DNA analysis, we have, as you say, facial reconstructions. This is the one where I have the most to say about how he actually died. Because we can see within his skull that a blade went through at one point. and it went through his brain and it nicked the inside of the skull on the other side. You can see these tiny details.

It's so much so that that's the most detailed of all the chapters. There's less conjecture there compared to the rest of them. We know that happened. So he was stabbed in the head. What else do we know it happened from his body? So it does look like he wasn't on a horse, whether or not he was shouting to give away his kingdom for one is another story. But we know that he wasn't on his horse.

And we know that he wasn't wearing a helmet because these injuries wouldn't have happened had he had protection on his head. head like that. So that had gone, he was likely to be on his knees or prone, and that he was hacked by a number of blades to the head. Yikes. There were, I think there were 11 or something injuries, which were shown up on bone, because obviously there would have been injuries that didn't make it through to the bone, so we couldn't see those. So there were a lot of, there were a lot of head injuries, but his face was, was okay, his face was fine, which I find quite interesting, because there are excavations from Wars of the Roses battlefields where faces are just, just,

destroyed and so many of them just smashed him. But his face, that was kept clear so that he could be identified. And then there's another couple of wounds which happened. It looks like it was possibly posthumous. He was thrown over a horse and ridden off and somebody stabbed him in the backside and we can see those through his pelvic bones. We can see the injury as well. So that could have killed him. Had he had he been alive but it's thought maybe that happened. Maybe it came later. I mean, it's fascinating, isn't it? That's probably the only chance that we're going to get to excavate a king because you can't just go into Westminster Abbey with Time Team and announce that you're there to dig people up, can you? I have such

mixed thoughts. More to the pity as far as I'm concerned. Tell me your mixed thoughts. Oh, no. Well, I have mixed thoughts because I really want to put everyone in a CT scanner and I just, you know, I want to look and see and yeah, kind of all of these things, you know, I really want to do that. But at the same time, I was having this discussion just yesterday online that people wanting to really look at the which are thought to be that of the princes in the tower, and it's just not going to happen. I don't think the church are going to suddenly led us in there to have a prod and a poke.

And yeah, I'd mixed thoughts, because of course I'd love to do that. And I, you know, I joke about digging up bodies and all the rest of it. But in truth, I do have a respect for the fact that if people are buried, particularly Christian burials, I don't know a huge amount about others, but certainly Christian burials, people are buried with the expectation that they are going to be left to rest in peace. I think none of our monarchs ever were. But there is a, the expectation.

No, they were throwing on rubbish heaps. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, leave them be. But it's that curiosity, isn't it? I know. We could get Henry out and we could find out for finally once and for all. Did he have syphilis? What was going on there?

But, you could see that in bones. You can potentially see that. I think he had an osteomyelitis, which is an infection within the bone of the legs. And again, you know, I have to be careful with that because as someone who trained in orthopedic surgery, that's something that obviously I'm going to be keen on looking for. But no, I think, you know, we could see that. We could just, you know, nip to St George's Chapel in the cover of darkness and have a wee look. No one didn't mind, really, would they? I mean, there's graveyards in Edinburgh, isn't there, where people, they were, well, they were stealing bodies all over the place, but just nicking bits of people that were buried, famous criminals. and things like that. But not royalty, but like Birken hair and bits of their skin

are supposed to be binding books and all this stuff. And yeah, I suppose maybe we should have a bit more due process than that around people dying. Interestingly, it's still happening. People are still going and, yeah. No, it's not. What? So there's stories at the moment about this particular, okay, this is something I've got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about,

that we as creatives tend to like going into graveyards and taking ideas and stories and names. Charles Dickens, got Ebenezer Scrooge. He was a character that was a name that he'd seen on a gravestone, Ebenezer Scrogy. You know, the Beatles have done it. And more recently, J.K. Rowling's done it. And this has turned into a dark tourism thing to go to the graveyards where these stories have been come from. And particularly even a couple of weeks ago, somebody went into Edinburgh, enter their Greyfriars, Kirkyard in Edinburgh and stole a piece of a gravestone, just chipped it off

and walked away with it. Who did that belong to? Just a random... I'm not sure that particular piece of information hasn't been announced, and I think that's probably because it was something to do with the whole Harry Potter tourism. Right, yes. So it's still going on. People are still stealing bits and pieces. Wow. Yeah, and the Society of Antiquaries in Scotland have a bit of a campaign

to stop things being sold at auction, because there's a lot of body parts going about. There's a lot of skulls and bones that were used by medics, by medical students and by doctors that have been in private collections and now they're making their way to auction houses and people, you know, and they're putting them up for sale

and the Society of Antiquaries are saying, you know what, that's enough. We're not the Georgians anymore. We don't need to do this. We have other ways. Especially, we often don't know the consent of this. When I die, I'm quite happy to be stuffed and put on someone's sofa as a permanent reminder.

That's fine. And then you can sell me on eBay. That's as long as I'm completely intact with a weird smile on the face. But we don't have consent from these people. We don't know if that person said that that was all right to do it or not. That's exactly it. You know, you and I can give ourselves to medical science

and be blown up in experiments or cut up by medical students and what have you. But there's a piece of paper that says, yeah, let's do it. Whereas these, we have absolutely no idea. These might have been people who were dragged out of the ground by resurrectionists. These might have been people who were hanged for something. these might have been any number of things

that people, Burke and Hair weren't the only ones knocking people off to make a pretty penny out of the medical students so yeah we've no idea

where these came from and I talk a lot about the monarchs because we have all these wonderful good stories but underneath there are many, many more people who have stories behind

what happened to their bodies. Susie, you've been absolutely so wonderful to talk to. Thank you so much. If people want to find you online, where can they find you? They can find me telling gory stories on TikTok.

My username's just at Susie Edge. And the same on Twitter. And on Instagram as well, soos. Dot Edge. Those are the main places where I hang out and share stuff like this. And of course, the book. Give us the full title. The book.

The book is called Mortal Monarchs, A Thousand Years of Royal Deaths. And it is being published on the 29th of September. Go and get it and learn all about gushing bodies and... We've barely scratched the surface today. Thank you so much. You've been just wonderful to talk to. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you for listening. And thank you so much to Susie for coming on and talking about your research and your book. I'd loved this episode. And it's so fitting as well for the times we're in. But if you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Join me again, Betwixta Sheets, the History of Sex, Scandal and Society. A podcast by History.

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