00:00So we're standing outside Baskerville House and this was the home to John
00:05Baskerville. Now John Baskerville was a printer in the 1700s in Birmingham and
00:10why is he important? Well first and foremost he devised the typeface
00:15Baskerville. Now at that time a lot of printed matter was swirly scripted
00:23writing and John Baskerville along with the pen name that was also invented in
00:28Birmingham and made for pennies is credited with spreading literacy around
00:32the world. Now that might all sound quite drolly but his life got incredibly more
00:39interesting after his death. He was an atheist and he decreed in his will that
00:44he didn't want to be buried in a Church of England graveyard. So what they did
00:49they buried him, they embalmed him and they buried him standing upright in his
00:54own garden which was where Baskerville House which is behind me stands today.
00:59And that was fine for the first 50 years until eventually they decided to put a
01:06canal system through Birmingham. While excavating the canal they came upon his
01:12body. They took it to Digbeth and it's a bit hazy here either it was in a church
01:17crypt or more likely as he was an atheist it was in a warehouse cellar. Now as
01:25anybody from Birmingham knows the mighty River Rain runs through Digbeth and I
01:29say that as a bit of a joke because today it's a bit of a trickle but we all
01:33know that twice a year it tends to flood. The ray flooded, washed his body out of
01:41the cellar off down the River Ray towards where Spaghetti Junction is
01:44today. They managed to find his body and they bought it back to Birmingham. What
01:51happened then was quite astonishing. They placed his body in a shop window on New
01:57Street and you can actually pay to go in and see his body. Suppose today we would
02:03have a selfie but back then what they actually did was produced souvenirs which
02:10were little squares of the bandages he was wrapped in which you can purchase
02:14and take away as a celebration of seeing his body. They called it Memento Mori.
02:21Eventually the shop closed, still unsure what to do with his body and against his
02:26wishes they took him to Worstow Lane Cemetery in the Jewelry Quarter
02:32where they buried him next to the chapel. And you'd think that would be an end to
02:37this story. But Birmingham was heavily bombed during the Second World War, the
02:43chapel in Worstow Lane Cemetery was destroyed with a bomb and a bomb landed
02:48on John Baskerville's grave. So we're not even sure exactly where he is in the
02:54Jewelry Quarter, we only know he's spread all over Worstow Lane Cemetery.
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