Theo the Pipe Smoker (* around 1790; † around 1820 in Kleinbasel) is the fictitious name of a man whose skeleton was found in 1984 in a former potter's field near the Theodorskirche (Theodor Church) in Kleinbasel (part of the Swiss city of Basel). He was named after the church's cemetery in which he was found.Gerhard Hotz et al.: Theo der Pfeifenraucher – ein genealogisch-naturwissenschaftliches Identifizierungsprojekt. Annual book Swiss Family Research Society (2017), vol. 44, 30 (german).
Kleinbasel around 1800 Although Kleinbasel was part of the city of Basel since the Middle Ages, it remained independent in many respects due to its location on the right bank of the Rhine. It was home to middle class tradespeople with their families and domestic workers. The census of 1799 showed a population of just under 3000 people for the densely populated Kleinbasel, plus those not recorded, such as day labourers or passing travellers. When Theo was born, the Middle Bridge was the only link across the Rhine in the region, as the Wettstein Bridge (German: ) was only built in 1879.
Back then, the center of Kleinbasel was the "Pond" (German: ), a network of canals with water from the river Wiese that was used for commercial purposes. It was used by sawmills, dye works and fulling mills, by tanners and millers, for gypsum mills, tobacco mills and others. In 1823, the canals drove a total of 64 wheels, 34 of which were grain mills.Basler-bauten.ch They were heavily polluted by sewage and faeces. Kleinbasel's "Pond" was filled in between 1907 and 1917. The ("Pond Alley") between Claragraben and Ochsengasse still recalls this pond today.
On the southern and eastern side of Kleinbasel, that were not traversed by watercourses, many of Kleinbasel's inhabitants lived on agriculture, as winegrowers or sailors.Philipp Senn in Theo der Pfeifenraucher; edition Christoph Merian, Basel 2010, p. 114 ff
Cemetery The former vineyard area to the west of the Theodorskirche was purchased in 1779 by council member Remigius Merian. After the last grape harvest, it was prepared for the long-needed extension of the regular churchyard; the first funeral took place on 5 October 1779. The new cemetery was enclosed by a wall and was named (Merian's Graveyard) after its former owner. Members of the lower social class were mainly buried there. However, as its capacity was quickly exhausted, two more areas were used as cemeteries, the in 1805 and the in 1831; these too did not prove to be sustainable. In 1832, a new cemetery was established outside the city near the Messeplatz for the rapidly growing population of Basel. The Merianscher Totenacker near the Theodorskirche was closed as of 1 May 1833.Gerhard Hotz et al.: Theo der Pfeifenraucher; Edition Christoph Merian, Basel 2010, p. 30 The Theodor schoolhouse, built in 1855/56, stands on the site of the former graveyard.
During these 54 years, a total of 4334 people died in Kleinbasel. They were buried there in the different cemeteries, but most of them in the small Merianscher Totenacker. Amongst those were inhabitants of Kleinbasel: craftsman, small traders, carters, fishermen, and their families. All burials were recorded in the register of deaths of the St. Theodor parish with first and last name, age, and often also with profession and origin.Gerhard Hotz et al.: Theo der Pfeifenraucher; Edition Christoph Merian, Basel 2010, p. 31
Discovery
A heat pump was to be installed in this schoolhouse in 1984, which required new pipes to be built. The discovery of graves in the area west of the Theodorskirche next to the schoolhouse was to be expected. Thus, the excavation work was accompanied by archaeologists of the Archäologischen Bodenforschung Basel-Stadt, the archaeological department of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. In the winter of 1984, workers came across the remains of 24 graves in the western part of the former cemetery.
Theo's body was found in the middle of a stack of six in grave 19. He was buried in a southwest–northeast orientation in a stretched supine position. There were hardly any traces left of a coffin. The skeleton was recovered completely, only the bones of a foot had to remain in the ground, as the wall of the pit could not be removed for static reasons. The neighbouring graves 15, 17, and 22 were at a 90-degree angle, oriented northwest–southeast, and tended to be less deep. Theo's grave was dated as later than these, but earlier than grave 20, oriented in the same direction at his feet. This means that Theo had been buried before the final phase of the cemetery. The fact that these graves of the older phase were partly higher than the graves from the younger phase is possibly related to the fact that the "decree regarding the burial of corpses" of 25 February 1814 demanded that those who had died of "nervous fever" (typhus) should be buried in particularly deep graves in order to prevent "toxic fumes" from rising. The archaeologists concluded that this change in burial methods was possibly connected with the great typhoid epidemic of 1814. The older graves were oriented northeast–southwest and rather shallow, whereas the graves of the younger phase were oriented southwest–northeast and tended to be placed deeper in the ground.
So, Theo's body had obviously neither been buried at the beginning of this younger burial phase of 1814 nor the last one around 1833, but probably in the 1820s. A total of 24 skeletons were recovered, brought to the Natural History Museum of Basel and archived there in the collection.Gerhard Hotz et al.: Theo der Pfeifenraucher; Edition Christoph Merian, Basel 2010, p. 32 ff
Scientific research Identified historical skeletons are mostly from persons of the social upper class. Their graves are often in churches and the circumstances of their burial are well documented. The project of Theo's identification is therefore an exception intending to identify a nameless person, a "nobody" from the lower class.Gerhard Hotz, Lucas Burkart, Kaspar von Greyerz : Theo, the pipe smoker Anthropological and historical identification of a person from 19th century Basel. Abstract book of the fourteenth Annual Meeting of the European Association of Archaeology 2008, Malta, p. 78-79.
The research on Theo's skeleton and his person was also the beginning of the extensive Basel Citizen Science program (in German: Bürgerforschung Basel-Stadt, BBS). Until 2019 around 70 volunteer researchers were involved in this project transcribing historical sources and processing data. Another project of Citizen Science was the research on Anna Catharina Bischoff, an ancestor of the former British prime minister Boris Johnson.
The numerous written and pictorial documents in the Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt (State Archives of Basel City) from the 18th and 19th centuries greatly facilitated the research. Natural sciences and humanities disciplines are working together and complementing each other, with genealogical research playing a key role. The project is headed by anthropologist Gerhard Hotz, curator at the Natural History Museum Basel.Citizen Science Basel
First investigations As part of an exercise conducted by the Institute for Integrative Prehistory and Archaeological Science of the University of Basel, two students, anthropologist Simon Kramis and historian Fabian Link, examined the skeleton from tomb 19 in 2004 and noticed two oval, almost circular gaps in the young man's dentures, which aroused the young researchers' curiosity and led to further investigations of the skeleton. These revealed that the deceased was a male who had died between the age of 28 and 32.Gerhard Hotz et al.: Theo der Pfeifenraucher, Leben in Kleinbasel um 1800; Naturhistorisches Museum Basel, Edition Christoph Merian, Basel 2010, p. 78–82
It is not known where Theo was born. A strontium isotope analysis of three of his molars showed that he had most probably lived in the Basel area until the age of 13. Investigations of dental cement and bone showed that as a young man he had suffered at least two phases of stress and signs of incipient osteoarthritis.Guido Kleinhubbert: Der Fall "Theo" – hat seine Frau ihn getötet? (The "Theo" case: Did his wife kill him?) Spiegel Online, 52/2017 (german), p. 95 He was rather small at 1,60 metres and had a balanced diet even during his boyhood. This suggests that he was not among the poorest. As analyses of the arm and clavicle bones showed, Theo was most likely a right-handed craftsman.Gerhard Hotz et al.: Theo der Pfeifenraucher; Edition Christoph Merian, Basel 2010, p. 45 ff
Theo died too young; the life expectancy of a thirty-year-old in the 19th century was 49 years. In the years before his death he was healthy and well-fed: His skeleton showed no serious illness or malnutrition. The cause of death could possibly have been an injury to the soft tissues caused by violence, or an infectious disease with a rapid course that left no traces on the skeleton.
Teeth
Theo's teeth were badly affected by tooth decay or had died off. Apart from that, the aforementioned oval gaps on the left side of the dentition are remarkable, as they almost form a circular cross-section when the jaw is slightly opened. Examinations with a scanning electron microscope showed fine scratch marks on the tooth surface, indicating a wear process caused by the ceramic mouthpiece of a clay pipe and the fine quartz grains contained therein.Lukas M. Kofmehl, Georg Schulz, Hans Deyhle, Andreas Filippi, Gerhard Hotz, and Simon Kramis: Computed tomography to quantify tooth abrasion, Proceedings of SPIE 7804. 2010.
Such abrasions occurred almost worldwide from the 17th to the 19th century because clay pipes were widespread at the time. Excavations in graveyards with well-documented information on the deceased show that excessive smoking of clay pipes, which could also be smoked while working without using the hands, was more common in socially weak and hardworking classes.Simon Kramis: Tonpfeifenraucher aus Basler Friedhöfen. Anthropologische und historische Aspekte des "Tabaktrinckens". "Knasterkopf", journal for clay pipes and historical enjoyment of tobacco, volume 19, 2007, page 41 – 44 (german) Since the clay mouthpiece was harder than the tooth enamel, it ground into the surrounding teeth over time. This exposed the softer dentin and intensified the wear process. Pipe holes develop after five to ten years of intensive smoking. Consequently, Theo must have been a long-time smoker who belonged to the artisan population.
Who was Theo? On the small Merianscher Totenacker, which was in use from 5 October 1779 to 1 May 1833, there were neither gravestones nor memorial plaques nor a map of the area, nothing reminded of the dead who had been buried here. In the Staatsarchiv Basel-Stadt, on the other hand, there was the death register of the parish of St. Theodor which listed the names, professions, age at death, and places of birth of all those who died in Kleinbasel. Information on the burial place, however, was missing; it was not specified whether a deceased person found their final resting place in the Theodorskirche, in the Merianscher Totenacker, or in another of Kleinbasel's cemeteries.