Adipocere

Adipocere was first described by Sir Thomas Browne in his discourse Hydriotaphia, Urn Burial (1658):[4] In a Hydropicall body ten years buried in a Church-yard, we met with a fat concretion, where the nitre of the Earth, and the salt and lixivious liquor of the body, had coagulated large lumps of fat, into the consistence of the hardest castile-soap: wherof part remaineth with us.The chemical process of adipocere formation, saponification, came to be understood in the 17th century when microscopes became widely available.

Granville apparently thought that the waxy material from which he made the candles had been used to preserve the mummy, rather than its being a product of the saponification of the mummified body.

Pathologists Sydney Smith and Professor Littlejohn were able to find more than enough evidence from the preserved remains for police to identify the victims and charge the killer, who was hanged.

[10] Adipocerous formation preserved the left hemisphere of the brain of a 13th-century infant such that sulci, gyri, and even Nissl bodies in the motor cortex could be distinguished in the 20th century.

[4] The degradation of adipocere continues after exhumation at the microscopic level resulting from the combination of exposure to air, handling, dissection and the enzymatic activity of microbiota.