A mummified corpse found buried in a Basel church is a relative of British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, scientific testing has revealed. The body is that of 67-year-old Anna Catharina Bischoff, who was born in 1719 in Strasbourg, France, and died in 1787 in Basel. She is believed to be Johnson’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother, according to researchers who had been testing her body since 2015 and announced their findings on Thursday. The mummy was buried in the family tomb of Isaak Bischoff, a hospital director in 17th-century Basel, in the city’s Barfüsser church. Its identity had eluded researchers for decades. + Basel police archives reveal lives of past city residents Anna Bischoff is believed to have died of mercury poisoning, a common treatment for syphilis in her time. The high concentration of mercury in her body is what preserved it enough for it to be exhumed and studied. The link to Johnson was established after researchers traced ...
