the most obscure historical question ever asked

Lime vs. carpet beetles....what's the best for disposing of a body?

you mean carrabid beetles. They are a definate asset. However many of us dont keep a collection of live carrabids in our homes.

i think, more from a practical use, carrabids could be used in a kitchen to assist you in french cutting your racks of lamb

I understand such beetles, and/or grub worms, are frequently used in forensic labs to remove the last stubborn bits of tissue from bones.

i think the idea that there was someone keeping watch over where individual bodies were being thrown in the midst of the chaos and abject hatred of the revolution is a sweet wonderful take on the goodness of humanity. I don't think it happened, but then I don't have an extensive library on the History of France. Go read, dov. Find the good soul.

I find that entire concept implausible. The period of the Terror was just beginning as Louis was executed, and it hadn't reached its peak when Marie Antoinette was executed. To accept such a theory that someone was observing and could identify exactly which remains belonged to Louis and to Marie is preposterous for at least the following reaons. It would require two separate observations: Louis was executed January 21st, 1793, and Marie was not executed until October 16th. It would either require the credulity to believe that the remains were thrown into the same pit, or that our putative observer is now keeping a careful daily watch over both sites, or that more than one observer is involved. Robspierre was not executed until July, 1794 (27th?), which more or less ended the Terror, so the entire contention that someone had been watching is stretched beyond the point of credence--in my opinion--by the necessity of one or more observers, taking note of exactly into which pit each set of remains had been placed, and how many other remains went in after, and in what position; coupled with the necessity for the observation of one for more than one and a half years, and the other for more than nine months. To me, such a theory is just too implausible.

It's the bones and the teeth that'll catch you out if you have an.... accident to dispose of. I was reading in one of those cheery books produced by forensic anthropologists about a case he was involved in. It came down to being sure that the killer in a murder/suicide had actually perished with his victim after managing to set a fire that destroyed just about all possible evidence.

Amazingly the man had some X-rays done on his back and a gold filling just happened to be picked up in those. After painstakingly sifting through the ashes and dirt they found the filling and could make an ID. It had a lot of wonderful detail like that. Basically, disposing of a corpse is pretty difficult. Personally, I'd pick something larger than a beetle to do the job effectively.

They were creamaited.

Cremated!? That burns me up!!

Not cremated, creamaited,

that's either when they take away your whole milk and make you use the powder stuff or

where they pour a delicious wheat based cereal over your remains.

Welcome zman136 !

Joe

lime and decomposition.
to al of you who have given your sometimes excellent reviews, including chemistry lessons, i would like to add my pennyworth. if you read any basic book regarding forensic science, you should find the following. the important factor is the condition of the lime and the soil it is in. many murderers have made this simple mistake. if a body is buried in damp or wet lime, it will definateley speed up the decomposition of the body. however, if the lime is dry, and the ambient surroundings are dry, the lime will in fact draw the moisture from the body, effectiveley mummifying it, and preserving the remains indefinateley. speak to your local mortician, pathologist. i am always happy to stand corrected. it is all a learning process. now to go and give some help concerning the original question. bye.

re - the most obscure historical question ever asked
i have found this:-

The Destruction of the Royal Tombs in Saint Denis

Royal necropolis of France

The Abbey of Saint Denis, which is located about 17 kilometres north of Paris, is the last resting place of most of the French kings and queens. Saint Denis was the first bishop of Lutetia (Paris). According to the legend he was beheaded by the Romans on the hill now known as Montmartre, after which he picked up his head and walked away. He was buried at the spot where he fell and abbey was built to mark the place. From the 6th century on, French kings chose the abbey as their place of burial.

In 1122 the famous Suger was named abbot of Saint Denis by king Louis VI the Fat. In 1136 he ordered the building of a new abbey church, which was finished in 1147. Around 1260 King Louis IX, who is known as Saint Louis, put monuments on the graves of his predecessors. These monuments can still be seen in the church today.

We are indeed fortunate that the abbey is still here today, because events during the French Revolution could well have led to its total destruction. In 1793, the French guillotined their king and queen, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. A royal funeral in St. Denis was out of the question: they were buried in the same cemetery as the other victims of the guillotine. To hasten the decomposing of their bodies, they were buried in open coffins. In the same year the French desacrated the Royal Tombs at St. Denis. They opened the tombs and took out the bodies, which were dumped in two large pits nearby. Some people took souvenirs, like a shoulderblade of Hugues Capet (d. 996), founder of the Capet dynasty, or the beard of king Henri IV (d. 1610). The archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir saved many of the monuments from destruction, by claiming them for his Museum of French Monuments. In the following years the abbey decayed, because in revolutionary France Christianity had been replaced by the Religion of Reason.

Emperor Napoleon I reopened the church in 1806, after some urgent repairs. He was as much an enemy of the Bourbon kings as the revolutionaries were, so the royal remains were left in their mass-graves. In 1813 the architect Debret started working on the church. His work was a disaster and as a result one of the church's two spires had to be demolished in 1846. Today, the church has still only got one spire.

After Napoleon's first exile, to the island of Elba, the Bourbons briefly returned to power. They ordered a search for the corpses of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, which were found on 21 January 1815 and brought to St. Denis. They were buried in the crypt. On the exact spot of their original graves, the Chapelle Expiatore was built (1816-1821). It is situated on the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris.

Guide Michelin, Paris et sa banlieue, Paris, 1976

www.xs4all.nl/~ejnoomen/story103.html


this doesn't answer how they knew they had the right bodies, but it is a start. i used the search ' where is marie antoinette buried' in case you want to search further. hope it helps.
profhig

What you say is very logical. I would think though, in that vein, that you would recognize the diversity of human reactions, rspecially in times of peril such as the French Terror. No matter what the politics there must have been, some people would have been passionately pro-monarchy - no matter what! You can't get all the people of any nation to agree on any issue. Hence the laughter from the Western world when told by the leaders of North Korea and Cuba (and the like) that 100% of their people voted in favor of an issue. They, in France, might have been universally convinced to keep quiet about their sentiments. You can bet that at the circus that was the execution of Marie Antoinette, you would have found many people in bliss at the thought of providing a service for their Queen. It is possible to conceive of someone tracking the corpse for as long as it was necessary to remove it to a suitable tomb.

As with most history, there are many theories and interpretations as to what happened and why, some more plausible than others. Add to this that the writers are human and therefore fallible, and that quite often their 'facts' are coloured (sometimes for what they believe to be the noblest of reasons) according to their persuasion, it falls on the individual to decide what is truth. I don't really care what happened to the decadent ruling classes of pre-revolution France, but I do care that somebody is seeking knowledge, and have often felt the frustration of being unable to discover some vein of possibility. This is why I have added my small contribution to the debate.

they do

umm..if you take a look at the datestamp you'll notice that you are just 3 days hort of 9 yrs late with your response.