Mummy is revealed as Boris Johnson’s ancestor
THE mummified remains of a woman discovered in a Swiss church four decades ago is the great-great-great-great-greatgreat-great grandmother of Boris Johnson.
Scientists have finally solved the mystery over her identity and uncovered the ancestral link between her and the Foreign Secretary.
Her body was found in 1975 at Barfusser Church in Basel.
A team of genealogists and molecular geneticists have identified the body as Anna Catharina Bischoff who was born in 1719 and died in Basel in 1787, aged 68. The mother of seven, who had married a church minister, was found buried in front of the altar.
Only two of her girls survived, one also called Anna, married Christian Hubert Baron Pfeffel von Kriegelstein, and generations later came Stanley Johnson, father to the Foreign Secretary.
Her identity was confirmed after scientists managed to extract DNA material from her big toe, which matched surviving members of the Bischoff family. It revealed a 99.8 per cent probability of a match with the same maternal family tree, as there was no gravestone to reveal her identity.
Gerhard Hotz, curator at Basel’s Natural History Museum, said identifying her took two years of research involving more than 40 people. For the team, he added, the discovery of the link to Mr Johnson was the icing on the cake.
He said: “It was a risky project.
“We didn’t know where we were going and whether we would gain anything. We had so much luck. And then entered Boris Johnson – what more do you want?”
Her body was riddled with mercury which was a traditional treatment for syphilis from the late 15th to the 19th century.
Boris Johnson yesterday said he was excited to hear about the discovery.
He tweeted: “Very excited to hear about my late great grand ‘mummy’ – a pioneer in sexual health care. Very proud.”
THE plots of TV’s forensic crime series Silent Witness have never produced anything quite as bizarre as this. DNA tests on a 16th-century mummified body reveal that the corpse is in fact Boris Johnson’s great-great-great-greatgreat-great-great-grandmother.
Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.