Bits and Pieces - Missing bodies, missing parts

Queen Anne Boleyn (1507 - 1536)
"It is quite amazing how many parts of the body belonging to famous people in history, somehow become separated from the body itself and turn up again, many years or even centuries later. After Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded in 1536 on the orders of her husband, King Henry VIII, her heart was stolen and secretly hidden in a church near Thetford, Suffolk. Her heart was re-discovered in 1836 and re-buried under the church organ where it remains still."
Source: here

King Charles I (1600 - 1649)
"King Charles I was beheaded in 1649 and buried at Windsor Castle in the same vault as Henry VIII. The coffin was opened in 1813 and Sir Henry Halford, the royal surgeon, performed an autopsy on the body. He secretly stole Charles' fourth cervical vertebra and for the next 30 years he loved to shock his friends at dinner parties by using the vertebra as a salt-holder.
Queen Victoria, hearing of this, demanded that the bone was returned to Charles' coffin immediately. It was!"

Louis XIV of France ( 1638- 1715)
"During the French Revolution the tomb of the French king was wrecked and plundered. His heart was stolen and sold to Lord Harcourt who later sold it to the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend William Buckland. One night at dinner, the Dean, who liked to experiment with food, ate the embalmed heart!"

Ben Johnson ( 1573 - 1637)
"Ben Johnson, the English dramatist, was buried standing up in Westminster Abbey, but in 1849 his grave was disturbed during a later internment. The Dean of Westminster, William Buckland ( see Louis XIV above), stole Johnson's heel-bone but it later disappeared and was not found again until 1938 when the bone reappeared in an old furniture shop!"

Bodynapping Italian-Style
"The coffin and body of a 92-year old man was stolen from the family crypt on the shores of Lago Maggiore by persons unknown. The deed was discovered in mid-March by a family caretaker assigned to place fresh flowers on the grave each Sunday. The deceased was Italy?s most famous banker, a cagey Sicilian dead since last June; the body had been laid to rest in the mausoleum beneath that of his wife, Idea Socialista. Speculation has followed that extortion is the goal of the theft although no ransom has yet been demanded. In the past, the Mafia has been known to ransom stolen corpses. A prominent corporate leader has declared, "There is no limit to evil in Italy."
Source: here

Joseph Haydn (1732 – 1809)
"The world famous composer, Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) had his head stolen."

"Haydn's head was indeed stolen shortly after his burial in 1809. It was stolen by some students who were interested in the science of phrenology, which is the study of skulls. It was all the rage in the 19th century. People believed intelligence was related to skull shape. After ping through a series of owners it was reunited with it's body in the 1950's. The full story of this and Mozart's skull can be found in a book called "After the Funeral -The Posthumous Adventures of Famous Corpses" by Edwin A. Murphy. Mozart's skull, despite forensic testing, has not been conclusively identified with as belonging to the composer."
Source: here and here

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772)
"Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) famed scientist, theologian, educator, and mystic, spent nearly all of his 84 years in his native Sweden. But he died away from home on 29 March 1772 and was buried at the St.George of the East Church in London.
In 1908, the Swedish government sought to have Swedenborg's body reburied in the great cathedral in Uppsala. When his body was exhumed, it was discovered that his head was missing. An investigation revealed that Swedenborg's skull was stolen some 50 years after his death by a retired ship captain and amateur phrenologist."

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828)
"Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was the most famous Spanish painter of his day and arguably one of the finest painters who ever lived.
Goya spent nearly his entire life in his native Spain. He died on 16 April 1828 at age 82 during a brief stay in France. He was buried in the cemetery of Chartreuse in Bordeaux.
In 1899, the Spanish government obtained permission to transfer Goya's remains to Madrid for reburial with great fanfare at the Church of San Antonio de la Florida. The site was well chosen. Goya had painted the Church's beautiful frescoes a century before.
But when authorities opened his grave in Bordeaux, to the shock of all, it was discovered there was not just one, but two skeletons inside. What was worse, there was only one skull. Decomposition was such that there was no way of telling with certainty if the skull belonged to one body or the other."

Santa Clauls (St. Nicolas)
"The legend of Santa Claus has its origins in the stories surrounding St. Nicholas, a 4th century bishop who became a saint of the Catholic Church. After his death, he was buried near his church at Myra and his grave served as a shrine for centuries. In 1087 his remains were stolen and taken to Bari, Italy, where they became enshrined, boosting Bari's popularity as a site for pilgrimage."

Church plea over woman's remains
"A senior Church official has appealed for the return of a woman's remains stolen from her grave during a campaign by animal rights activists. Gladys Hammond, 82, was related to the owners of Darley Oaks Farm, who said last week they would stop breeding guinea pigs for medical research. Her remains were taken from a grave in nearby Yoxall, Staffs, in October."
"Mrs Hammond's body was taken from her grave in St Peter's churchyard in Yoxall on 6 or 7 October 2004, seven years after she was buried there."
Source: here

Oliver Cromwell and Exhimation Celebration
"England's long history of being ruled by monarchs was brieflyinterrupted in the 17th century, when Puritan military hero Oliver Cromwel ruled over a fledgling republic. It was a republic in name only, and Cromwell ruled briefly as a dictator, called the Lord Protector, from 1653 until his death in 1658. A few years after his death, the country had returned to a monarchy and King Charles II ruled. Cromwell's body was removed from its burial place at Westminster Abbey and descrated. His head was severed and stuck on a pole, where it stayed for twenty years -- a potent warning against dissidents. His head was eventually recovered and reburied in 1960, but nobody knows what happened to the rest of his body."
Source: here

Thomas Paine (1737 -1809)
"Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, died penniless in 1809 and nobody much cared. Except Englishman William Cobbett, who dug up and swiped Paine's remains ten years later, hoping to smuggle them to England. His goal was to build a shrine and rebury his hero. Unfortunately, the remains were somehow lost along the way."

Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson (1824 - 1863)
"American Civil War general Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson was not exhumed, but his left arm was. General Jackson was one of the most brilliant officers on the side of the Confederates, a former professor of artillery tactics at Virginia Military Institute and a distinguished veteran of the U. S. - Mexican War. Jackson was seriously wounded by his own men as he returned from the battlefield at Chancellorville, Virginia. His left arm was shot up and had to be amputated. The arm was spirited away by someone and buried in a nondescript grave near the site of the battle. Jackson was taken to a safer place to recuperate, but died eight days later and was taken to Lexington to be buried. In 1929 the arm was exhumed, placed in a small
box (it had been wrapped in cloth) and reburied at the Ellwood Family Cemetery near Spotsylvania."

Francesco Petrarch (1304 - 1374)
"An Italian analysis of what is thought to be the skeleton of poet Francesco Petrarch, father of the sonnet, revealed his skull was replaced by a woman's."

"Marin has determined that while the body in Petrarch's coffin is most likely the poet's, the skull - which is broken into several pieces - belonged to a female and could not be his.
"This must have been robbery," Marin said. "It is not, frankly, a nice business." Petrarch, upon whose poems Shakespeare later based his famous sonnets, is revered in Italy and is set to be celebrated this year on the 700th anniversary of his birth.
His coffin is known to have been opened twice before Marin looked inside this year. In 1630 a drunken friar and four accomplices broke in through a corner of the tomb and stole some of the poet's bones -- but are not thought to have taken his skull."

Laoshan
"Nothing has been found inside the coffin's inner chamber at the Laoshan tomb in Beijing. Archaeologists found only decorative patterns of silk fabrics when the outer chamber of the ancient tomb was opened Sunday.
A senior archaeologist said thieves had stolen everything in the coffin. It took archeologists half a day today to open the lid of the coffin inside the tomb dating back to the Western Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-24 A.D.).
The tomb was accidentally found early this year. Archeological excavations have continued since then. The 12-meter-tall tomb occupies an area half the size of a football field.
Wang Wuyu, who is in charge of the excavation, said some of the unearthed objects from the Laoshan tomb indicate that the tomb occupant was a king of the Yan Kingdom."
Sources: here and here

Attempt to steal Lincoln's body
Thieves caught in the act after having the coffin partially out of the sarcophagus
Source: here

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