New life for the death of monarchs
Modern post-mortem techniques have been used to take a fresh look at the deaths of four Kings and Queens – with surprising results. DAVID STEPHENSON reports.
LIKE a team of detectives reopening a batch of “cold cases”, serious questions have been raised about the deaths of George IV, dubbed “The Party King”, Queen Mary I, known as “Bloody Mary”, King Henry IV, “The Usurper”, and Queen Anne, “The Forgotten Queen”.
A team led by Professor Alice Roberts has challenged the accepted causes of death for the monarchs.
Their TV investigations saw them use prosthetics, fake organs and even jelly and custard to represent human tissues and membranes for the postmortems. But Prof Roberts explains: “We don’t want to be insensitive. We’re very cognisant of the fact we’re talking about real people.”
On the show she is joined by Home Office pathologist Dr Brett Lockyer.
While some viewers might find the removal of fake organs from life-like cadavers unsettling, Prof Roberts was able to take it in her stride. She started her career as a junior doctor in South Wales, followed by a spell as an anatomy demonstrator at Bristol University.
“I’ve been a clinical anatomist since 1998 so I am not shocked by cadavers any more,” she reveals.
Nonetheless, “faint-heated viewers” are warned at the start of the show. “I wouldn’t eat my dinner at the same time,” she warns.
“Sometimes even Brett surprises himself while filming.
“When we were doing George IV, he opened the stomach and found a big blood clot.
“Brett said, ‘This actually looks like a haemorrhage in a stomach’!
“We use a lot of jelly and custard, tapioca, and rice paper for various membranes, which works well.
“We also use Japanese mochi (rice cakes), which we find useful for all sorts of inflammatory masses and tumours.a lot of it is edible, not that you would want to eat it.”
But the ground-breaking series isn’t all gore. Prof Roberts adds: “There’s also dramatic reconstruction of the last days of the monarch.
“It puts you there in the moment with those kings and queens, with doctors trying to treat them as they approach their final days.”
The first episode will focus on
George IV, who lived up to his nickname as “The Party King”. Becoming Regent in 1811, he had a huge appetite for food, wine and romantic assignations, all of which impacted on his health and is graphically represented in his autopsy.
Prof Roberts says: “George IV lived a life of excess and the human body can only take so much.
“But he did live until he was 67 so he must have been pretty robust constitutionally to survive that long.
“It’s difficult to say whether he was morbidly obese, but he was clearly very overweight. The rupture of a blood vessel in his stomach was a terrifying way to go.”
Queen Anne, who reigned from 1702 to 1714, had 17 pregnancies, many ending in miscarriage or still birth. “She was very stoical in the face of what she was facing personally, but from what we know, having talked to historians, she was considered a good monarch.
“She would listen to her advisers and make sensible decisions, but not headline-grabbing, which may explain that ‘Forgotten Queen’ tag. Brett comes up with a diagnosis which underlines the obstetric difficulties she had.
“She was racked with grief about the number of babies she lost, which would have been very easily treated today.”
Mary I – Mary Tudor – also had obstetric problems, experiencing phantom pregnancies during her reign from 1553 to 1558. The daughter of Henry VIII was desperate for a child and heir to secure England’s return to Catholicism after her father had deserted Rome.
The final film on Henry IV focuses on a mysterious, debilitating skin condition he had during the later years of his reign from 1399 to 1413.
Although best known for usurping and murdering his cousin, Richard II, Prof Roberts explores whether his condition may have been leprosy.
She concludes: “Up until the 20th century, doctors really weren’t doing anything even slightly helpful.
“They were just using fake medicine, which had accumulated over time, from grinding up millipedes to endless applications of leeches.”