Results of Bone Analysis on the Headless Lady in the Coffin
Followers of our story will recall that Sue Black sent the sternum (breast) bone from the remains of the young lady that we found in Simon the Fox’s coffin to Dr. Ceiridwen Edwards, Senior Research Fellow in Archaeogenetics at the University of Huddersfield, to see if she could recover DNA. Even though this was the bone in the best condition from the coffin, it was still in a very poor state of preservation, as were the other remaining bones. This was due to chemical reactions from microbes in the body, the lead, timber and fabric of the coffin, and also the air, given that the coffin had been forced open, possibly in the hunt for jewellery or physical souvenirs of Lord Lovat. Fear of such souvenir hunters may explain why there are reports of the skull being removed from the coffin and placed in a separate wooden box in the crypt. The box is reported as late as the 1960’s...