Boris Johnson — the great-grandson of the Basel mummies in the seventh knee
Scientists in the Swiss city of Basel has finally solved the mystery of the mummified remains of a woman found in 1975 during the restoration of the Church Barfuesser, and made with the unexpected discovery. It turned out that this woman was a great-grandmother in the seventh lap of the current Minister of foreign Affairs of Britain Boris Johnson.
All the facts and had previously indicated that it was a secured person: she was buried in front of the altar in rich attire and, by all indications, lived in abundance.
But what was her name, when and how she died — it was covered with darkness.
Mercury poisoning
Headstone at her grave was not, however, an initial analysis of the wood of the coffin pointed to the XVI century.
There was another clue to the mystery: her body was saturated with mercury, large doses of which from the end of XV century until the XIX is usually treated syphilis. Being extremely toxic, mercury was killed rather than treated, but it was her presence in a woman’s body has helped to preserve the remains.
However, who she was in life, was never known.
Basel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was secured trading city, and its port on the Rhine at that time served as a major transportation hub for goods transportation throughout Europe, and so it remains today.
Local historians were aware that members of the wealthy families of Basel, it was customary to be buried either in the Church Barfuesser, or in the churchyard: some of them have records in the Church books, others clearly inscribed tombstones.
However, this female mummy was nothing. And only in 2017 it was revealed that she had once found before, namely, in 1843.
Records Dating back to the XIX century, brought historians to the idea that the mummy belonged to the famous Basel family of Bischoff.
DNA analysis
Using the latest technology Basel scientists were able to extract DNA from the big toe of a mummy.
And then another group of scientists, working independently, and compared those samples with DNA of living descendants of the family of Bischoff.
The result with 99.8% probability showed that all of the current descendants of this family, as mummy, are relatives of each other through the maternal line.
Thus, scientists and historians came to a consensus: the mummy is none other than Anna Catharina Bischoff, born in Basel in 1719 and died there in 1787-m.
Famous descendants
Once it was established her name, became possible — through well-preserved in the cases of wealthy families in the birth records, findings of marriage and deaths, to trace the full genealogy of Anna Katarina.
She had seven children but only two lived to Mature age, and her daughter Anna married a Christian Hubert Baron Pfeffel background Kriegelstein.
Five generations later, Maria Louise von Pfeffel married a Stanley Fred Williams.
Their daughter Yvonne is married to Osman Wilfred Kemal Johnson… and their son, Stanley Johnson, the father of the foreign Minister (and former mayor of London) Boris Johnson.
Johnson still has not commented on this discovery, but he without doubt knows about his ancestors background Pfeffel since a few years ago a party of the documentary series bi-Bi-si “Who Do You Think You Are?”, he spoke of them as “rich idlers”.
What is Anna Katarina? Does she really, as expressed by its great-grandson in the seventh generation, “had lived a normal life of a housewife”?
Sounds like it was.
She married the priest and most of his adult life he lived in Strasbourg. It was there, as I think she may have been infected with syphilis when caring for patients suffering from sexually transmitted diseases.
With the death of her husband, she returned to his native Basel and, apparently, has passed the intensive course of treatment with mercury, hoping to recover.
But it didn’t help: scientists believe that mercury poisoning Anna Catharina died. However, mercury has helped to preserve its remains, and this, in turn, allowed the scientists to set as its origin, and its famous descendants.