Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is best known for being one of the founding fathers of the United States, acting as elder statesman at the Constitutional Convention, and helping to draft the Declaration of Independence. He's also known for exercising freedom of the press to the hilt, and as the brains behind one of the most successful 'zines of all time, Poor Richard's Almanack. You know, where the "A Penny Saved is a Penny Earned" stuff comes from. But what a lot of Americans don't know is that good old Ben actually lived in London from 1757 to 1775, when he served as a representative of the American colonies to the British Parliament. While he was there, he lived with Mrs. Margaret Stevenson, a widow who rented him the upper rooms of her house. Mrs. Stevenson and her daughter, Polly, became like a second family to Franklin.

Because of the historic significance of this house they lived in, located at No. 36 Craven Street, a group of American and English Franklinophiles have purchased the house and have begun renovating it. A gristly discovery was made in 1998 when workmen began digging in the basement. Bones. Lots of bones. Lots and lots of bones, all dating from the time period of Franklin's stay in the house. Could our beloved founding father have been involved with some sort of unsavory crime, like mass murder?

Researchers suspect that the bones are actually the products of an anatomy school that met for a time in back of the house. In 1772, Polly Stevenson had married a young physician, William Hewson, and he lived with the family (and Franklin) for two years. Scientists examining the bones say they look like they came from the dissection table, due to evidence of sawing and drilling characteristic of medical tools of the day. Marcia Balisciano, director of the Craven Street House, informed Guinea Pig Zero editor Bob Helms and myself on a recent visit that animal bones showing the same sawing and drilling had also been recovered from the garden in front of the house. Hewson was a respected physician, but dissection of human bodies was prohibited at the time of his anatomy school. The bodies were probably obtained illegally from grave robbers and may have been surreptitiously delivered to the back of the house through a pub on the side street. When the medical students were through practicing their arcane arts, the dissected bodies were secretly buried in the backyard. Years later, the owners built an extension to the house, and the former backyard became the floor of the basement. Hewson unfortunately fell victim to his own experiments: he died of septicemia in 1774, after cutting himself during a dissection. Researchers speculate that Franklin probably knew what was going on in the anatomy school, but that it was unlikely that he participated. His scientific interests ran more to physics and natural science than to anatomy and medicine.