Benjamin Franklin is one of the most famous Americans to have ever lived. He is most famous for being a Founding Father and signer of the Declaration of Independence. He was also a scientist and inventor who was a key figure in the Enlightenment who would spend his life pursuing knowledge and promoting education in the United States.
Thanks to his inventions, such as the lightning rod, bifocal glasses, and the Franklin stove, our lives today are still impacted by his legacy as an inventor. He was also a major newspaper publisher, which helped the revolutionary cause spread its message.
Franklin was also the first U.S. ambassador to France, our most important ally during and after the Revolution. His face is also on the $100 bill, which some have even called “Benjamin” or “Benny” in his honor.
Listing all of Franklin’s achievements would take up too much space, and that alone tells us just how important he was. Even though he is a great man who contributed so much to the United States and the world, there was a mystery surrounding literal skeletons found in his basement.
Benjamin Franklin’s Work on the Revolution
Although Benjamin Franklin was an American patriot who was a key figure in the fight against the King of England and the English Empire, he had spent nearly 20 years living in London. Ironically, living in London, the capital of the English Empire, is where he fully developed his revolutionary ideas that would one day lead him to be the empire’s biggest enemy.
While living in London, he lived at a house at 37 Craven Street. He spent over a decade living in the home, and in the summer of 1775, he left London to return to the American Colonies. He arrived in America just a few weeks after the battles of Lexington and Concord were fought, which officially started the Revolution.
It ended up being good timing since he immediately went to work on behalf of the revolutionaries. A year later, he was one of the individuals who drafted the Declaration of Independence which he later signed. He later went on to live in Paris, France, for several years; then spent the rest of his life in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He never returned to his home in London.
Unveiling Ben Franklin’s Dark Secret
In 1998, the property at 37 Craven Street was renovated and restored by a group called The Friends of the Benjamin Franklin House in preparation for making the house a museum dedicated to Benjamin Franklin. In the course of the renovation, a startling discovery was made.
Skeletons belonging to over a dozen individuals were found on the property. The bones were tested, and the approximate date of death was during the same time that Franklin lived at the house. This caused many to wonder who the bones belonged to and how they were related to Franklin. Was there some sort of sinister reason? Did Benjamin Franklin kill these people? Did Benjamin Franklin perform experiments on them?
All sorts of questions were raised, and the great Founding Father’s reputation was all of a sudden open for debate. Was it possible that Benjamin Franklin was involved in some sort of criminal activity that would result in over a dozen people dying in his home and then burying them to hide the evidence only to be discovered 200 years later?
Franklin was also a known Freemason, which led to conspiracy theories about dark practices that the Freemasons performed. Historians and scientists got to work to research and investigate the skeletons and what Franklin’s relationship to them may or may not be. The conclusion was that the skeletons were the result of experiments done by a man named William Hewson.
William Hewson was a good friend of Benjamin Franklin and was also a well-known surgeon who focused on human anatomy throughout his career. Back then, it was difficult to get cadavers to dissect them or experiment on them. So, it was common for doctors and scientists to rob graves so that they could have enough cadavers to work on.
It is not known what Franklin knew, but according to what was found it was obvious that a sort of school of anatomy was being run in his house with bodies being used that had been stolen from nearby cemeteries. Historians say that Franklin knew that Hewson was working on cadavers he had illegally obtained but that Franklin was not involved whatsoever in anything to do with the cadavers.
So, although Benjamin Franklin was a Renaissance man living in the 18th century, one of the things that he surely was not was an assassin or grave robber. He may have snuck a peek at what his curious friend was doing to learn more about anatomy, but that was the extent of the Founding Father’s relationship with the skeletons in his basement.
