The unusual journey of John Baskerville's body: From garden burial to souvenir relics
Baskerville House, once the home of John Baskerville, a notable printer from the 1700s in Birmingham, stands as a testament to his legacy. John Baskerville is important for several reasons, but primarily because he published the typeface Baskerville. At that time, much of the printed matter was written in swirly scripted writing. John Baskerville, along with pen nibs are credited with spreading literacy around the world.
Transcript
00:00So we're standing outside Baskerville House and this was the home to John
00:05Baskerville. Now John Baskerville was a printer in the 1700s in Birmingham and
00:10why is he important? Well first and foremost he devised the typeface
00:15Baskerville. Now at that time a lot of printed matter was swirly scripted
00:23writing and John Baskerville along with the pen name that was also invented in
00:28Birmingham and made for pennies is credited with spreading literacy around
00:32the world. Now that might all sound quite drolly but his life got incredibly more
00:39interesting after his death. He was an atheist and he decreed in his will that
00:44he didn't want to be buried in a Church of England graveyard. So what they did
00:49they buried him, they embalmed him and they buried him standing upright in his
00:54own garden which was where Baskerville House which is behind me stands today.
00:59And that was fine for the first 50 years until eventually they decided to put a
01:06canal system through Birmingham. While excavating the canal they came upon his
01:12body. They took it to Digbeth and it's a bit hazy here either it was in a church
01:17crypt or more likely as he was an atheist it was in a warehouse cellar. Now as
01:25anybody from Birmingham knows the mighty River Rain runs through Digbeth and I
01:29say that as a bit of a joke because today it's a bit of a trickle but we all
01:33know that twice a year it tends to flood. The ray flooded, washed his body out of
01:41the cellar off down the River Ray towards where Spaghetti Junction is
01:44today. They managed to find his body and they bought it back to Birmingham. What
01:51happened then was quite astonishing. They placed his body in a shop window on New
01:57Street and you can actually pay to go in and see his body. Suppose today we would
02:03have a selfie but back then what they actually did was produced souvenirs which
02:10were little squares of the bandages he was wrapped in which you can purchase
02:14and take away as a celebration of seeing his body. They called it Memento Mori.
02:21Eventually the shop closed, still unsure what to do with his body and against his
02:26wishes they took him to Worstow Lane Cemetery in the Jewelry Quarter
02:32where they buried him next to the chapel. And you'd think that would be an end to
02:37this story. But Birmingham was heavily bombed during the Second World War, the
02:43chapel in Worstow Lane Cemetery was destroyed with a bomb and a bomb landed
02:48on John Baskerville's grave. So we're not even sure exactly where he is in the
02:54Jewelry Quarter, we only know he's spread all over Worstow Lane Cemetery.