ALAS, POOR RICHARD
Forensic team details monarch’s final moments.
King Richard III probably spent the last moments of his life on his knees in a swamp before taking a sword through the brain, according to a forensic analysis conducted by experts at the University of Leicester.
The scientists say the 15thcentury monarch, whose remains were discovered in 2012, was fatally stabbed from behind through the left side of his skull after losing his horse and helmet, and sustaining multiple injuries. The sword was thrust so far in — 10.5 centimetres — that researchers could see where the tip of the blade punctured the inside of his skull.
Richard would have been knocked unconscious immediately, said Sarah Hainsworth, a professor of materials engineering at the University of Leicester. His breathing would have stopped and then his heart, killing him within a few minutes.
“You know on the TV when somebody’s chopped, they die instantly and that’s the end. That’s not the reality,” Dr. Hainsworth told the National Post.
The remains of the king were excavated from beneath a parking lot in Leicester, central England, in August 2012. Dr. Hainsworth, with colleagues Guy Rutty and Jo Appleby, spent several months using modern forensic tools to reveal new clues about the last king of England to be killed in battle. Historical accounts state Richard was knocked from his horse at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.
The researchers used the same 3D-imaging technology found in modern hospitals, a CT scan, to get the big pictures. They used a micro-CT scan to get more refined images as well as a variety of microscopes and high-resolution photography.
Once they scanned the three parts of the skull, a process that took six hours per scan, researchers tapped into the extensive medieval weapons collection at the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds to match the shape and edging of the wounds to possible arms.
“If you took a serrated kitchen knife and pushed it through a block of hard cheese, what you’d get is a pattern on the cheese of the tool marks on your kitchen knife,” Dr. Hainsworth said. “You can also see marks like that in bone.”
Their investigation found that Richard also sustained a major injury to the right side of his head, likely from a halberd, a pole with an axe on the end. Dr. Hainsworth said the images couldn’t reveal of how much of his brain would have been exposed by that hit. Seven centimetres would have been fatal.
Dr. Hainsworth said the king also sustained four injuries to the top of his head — one from a square-shaped dagger, likely a rondel, and three slicing marks from another dagger — as well as injuriestohischeek,jaw,ribandpelvis. Richard will be buried in a $1.8-million ceremony at Leicester Cathedral.