• 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 Is Queen Elizabeth II Going To Be Buried In A Lead-Lined Coffin?

September 12, 2022 by Deborah Bloomfield

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom has died. As well as a number of strange traditions involving her death (for example, the Informing of the Bees), one odd fact has stood out: her coffin will weigh a surprising amount, given her slight frame. 

This is because, like Princess Diana and Prince Philip before her, her coffin will be lined with lead. In fact, it’s already lined with lead and has been ready for her for 30 years.

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 (iron would be better for fighting off the supernatural if that were the case). 

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 in a particularly messy way, 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.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Tesla ordered to share Autopilot data with the US traffic safety agency
  2. Thai lawmakers debate long-awaited legislation on torture, abductions
  3. Exclusive: China’s regulators tighten scrutiny of FX dealers – sources
  4. This Is Why Narcissists Are More Likely To Believe Conspiracy Theories

Source Link: Why Is Queen Elizabeth II Going To Be Buried In A Lead-Lined Coffin?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Project Hail Mary Trailer First Look: What Would Happen If The Sun Got Darker?
  • Newly Discovered Cell Structure Might Hold Key To Understanding Devastating Genetic Disorders
  • What Is Kakeya’s Needle Problem, And Why Do We Want To Solve It?
  • “I Wasn’t Prepared For The Sheer Number Of Them”: Cave Of Mummified Never-Before-Seen Eyeless Invertebrates Amazes Scientists
  • Asteroid Day At 10: How The World Is More Prepared Than Ever To Face Celestial Threats
  • What Happened When A New Zealand Man Fell Butt-First Onto A Powerful Air Hose
  • Ancient DNA Confirms Women’s Unexpected Status In One Of The Oldest Known Neolithic Settlements
  • Earth’s Weather Satellites Catch Cloud Changes… On Venus
  • Scientists Find Common Factors In People Who Have “Out-Of-Body” Experiences
  • Shocking Photos Reveal Extent Of Overfishing’s Impact On “Shrinking” Cod
  • Direct Fusion Drive Could Take Us To Sedna During Its Closest Approach In 11,000 Years
  • Earth’s Energy Imbalance Is More Than Double What It Should Be – And We Don’t Know Why
  • We May Have Misjudged A Fundamental Fact About The Cambrian Explosion
  • The Shoebill Is A Bird So Bizarre That Some People Don’t Even Believe It’s Real
  • Colossal’s “Dire Wolves” Are Now 6 Months Old – And They’ve Doubled In Size
  • How To Fake A Fossil: Find Out More In Issue 36 Of CURIOUS – Out Now
  • Is It True Earth Used To Take 420 Days To Orbit The Sun?
  • One Of The Ocean’s “Most Valuable Habitats” Grows The Only Flowers Known To Bloom In Seawater
  • World’s Largest Digital Camera Snaps 2,104 New Asteroids In 10 Hours, Mice With 2 Dads Father Their Own Offspring, And Much More This Week
  • Simplest Explanation For “Anomalous” Signals Coming From Underneath Antarctica Ruled Out
  • 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