• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Why Do Members Of The Royal Family Get Buried In Lead-Lined Coffins?

December 28, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that in 2022, Queen Elizabeth II died, and was buried. During the funeral arrangements, there were a number of strange traditions (for example, the Informing of the Bees). However, one odd fact stood out: her coffin weighed a surprising amount, given how small she was in life.

This is because, like Princess Diana and Prince Philip before her, her coffin was lined with lead. 

Advertisement

The practice of placing (posthumously) royals into coffins lined with lead goes back hundreds of years and has nothing to do with making sure Henry VIII can’t return from the dead to escape from his coffin for one last divorce.

For centuries, Kings, Queens, Princes, and Princesses have been placed in lead coffins to better preserve their bodies. The tradition dates from a time when modern methods of preservation were not yet available – using formaldehyde to preserve bodies was not discovered until 1869.

Decomposition is, obviously, something that affects everyone from Kings to peasants – which means bodies can end up in a particularly messy state, as is what happened to the first Norman King of England, William the Conqueror. 

Advertisement

William sustained an injury while riding in a battle that pierced his intestines. As he slowly died, the people in his life – most of whom he had not treated well, including his son, who he was at actual war with – decided not to take on the matter of arranging his funeral. After he died, his body was left decomposing on a stone slab while waiting for someone to volunteer.

Eventually, a knight did take it upon himself and transported the body a full 112 kilometers (70 miles) to Caen to be buried, as the body continued to decompose. The king, no longer occupied with matters of rule, now wiled away the hours by accumulating gas through decomposition.

Upon arrival, a fire in the city warmed the corpse up some more and kept those gases expanding. By the day of the funeral, it was too bloated to fit into the sarcophagus. Undeterred by basic physics, like a toddler trying to ram a square toy through a circle-shaped hole, the gravediggers attempted to cram him in there anyway.

Advertisement

It was at this point that the body blew, and “the swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the bystanders and the whole crowd,” according to Benedictine monk and chronicler Orderic Vitalis. The mourners got covered in dead king juice.

Royals that made it into their casket in the following centuries have had a more dignified end thanks to a method that means their bodies are preserved for up to a year longer than occurs in standard coffins. 

Lead-lined coffins slow the body’s decomposition by keeping moisture out of the casket. Lead does not decay and so remains airtight, preventing decomposition, but also any smells and gases from being released; not something you want if multiple Royals are sharing a vault or may be moved in the future. 

Advertisement

This type of casket was out of the price range for all but the most wealthy for centuries in Europe, and in the UK is still legally required for any bodies that are to be interred above ground.

This article was originally published in September 2022.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Tennis-Sharper, more focused Djokovic advances to US Open third round
  2. No One Pushed ‘Button’ to Prevent Biden from Speaking
  3. Japan PM contender Kono wants renewable energy, 5G to be focus of stimulus package
  4. Cabify bolts on grocery deliveries in Spain with Lola Market tie-up

Source Link: Why Do Members Of The Royal Family Get Buried In Lead-Lined Coffins?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • The Bizarre 1997 Experiment That Made A Frog Levitate
  • There’s A Very Good Reason Why October 1582 On Your Phone Is Missing 10 Days
  • Skynet-1A: Military Spacecraft Launched 56 Years Ago Has Been Moved By Persons Unknown
  • There’s A Simple Solution To Helping Avoid Erectile Dysfunction (But You’re Not Going To Like It)
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS May Be 10 Billion Years Old, This Rare Spider Is Half-Female, Half-Male Split Down The Middle, And Much More This Week
  • Why Do Trains Not Have Seatbelts? It’s Probably Not What You Think
  • World’s Driest Hot Desert Just Burst Into A Rare And Fleeting Desert Bloom
  • Theoretical Dark Matter Infernos Could Melt The Earth’s Core, Turning It Liquid
  • North America’s Largest Mammal Once Numbered 60 Million – Then Humans Nearly Drove It To Extinction
  • North America’s Largest Ever Land Animal Was A 21-Meter-Long Titan
  • A Two-Headed Fossil, 50/50 Spider, And World-First Butt Drag
  • Interstellar Comet 3I/ATLAS Is Losing Buckets Of Water Every Second – And It’s Got Cyanide
  • “A Historic Shift”: Renewables Generated More Power Than Coal Globally For First Time
  • The World’s Oldest Known Snake In Captivity Became A Mom At 62 – No Dad Required
  • Biggest Ocean Current On Earth Is Set To Shift, Spelling Huge Changes For Ecosystems
  • Why Are The Continents All Bunched Up On One Side Of The Planet?
  • Why Can’t We Reach Absolute Zero?
  • “We Were Onto Something”: Highest Resolution Radio Arc Shows The Lowest Mass Dark Object Yet
  • How Headsets Made For Cyclists Are Giving Hearing And Hope To Kids With Glue Ear
  • It Was Thought Only One Mammal On Earth Had Iridescent Fur – Turns Out There’s More
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version