Cripes, Boris ... mysterious Swiss mummy is your relative!
SHE’S smartly dressed and has probably enjoyed one or two good meals in her lifetime.
But that’s not all the mummy found in a Swiss church has in common with Boris Johnson.
Scientists have discovered that the woman was Mr Johnson’s great great great great great great grandmother (that’s six times great).
She was identified as an ancestor of our Foreign Secretary with DNA extracted from her big toe – putting an end to a decades-long mystery.
When she was found in a Basel church in 1975, experts thought she had been wealthy as she was dressed in good- quality clothes and was rotund, suggesting she was well-fed.
They also established she had been poisoned by mercury, once a common treatment for syphilis, and the toxic metal had preserved her body.
But they didn’t know who she was until a chance discovery in archives last year linked her to the Bischoffs, a wealthy Basel family. Her DNA was then extracted and compared with that of living members of the family. Finally, genealogists found that the mummified corpse was Anna Catharina Bischoff, a pastor’s daughter who was born in 1719 in Strasbourg.
She had seven children with husband Lukas Gernler. Only two survived childhood, but one daughter, Anna, married Christian Hubert Baron Pfeffel von Kriegelstein.
Four generations later, Marie Luise von Pfeffel and Stanley Fred Williams had a daughter, Yvonne, who married Osman Wilfred Johnson Kemal. Their son, Stanley Johnson, is Boris Johnson’s father.
Researchers believe Anna Catharina may have contracted syphilis while caring for patients with the sexually transmitted disease, and died in 1787 at the age of 68.
Mr Johnson wrote on Twitter last night: ‘Very excited to hear about my late great grand “mummy” – a pioneer in sexual health care. Very proud.’
His great great great great great great gran