Theo the Pipe Smoker

[1] 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.

Back then, the center of Kleinbasel was the "Pond" (German: Teich), a network of canals with water from the river Wiese that was used for commercial purposes.

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.

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.

A total of 24 skeletons were recovered, brought to the Natural History Museum of Basel and archived there in the collection.

[7] 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).

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.

[8] 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.

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.

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.

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.

Since Theo had belonged to the younger burial phase and the archaeologists connected this to the great typhoid epidemic of 1814, all men who died before 1814 were struck off the list.

As Theo must have had the pipe in his mouth most of the time during his work and smoking was forbidden during activities in the wood and textile trades, the probability that he had pursued such a profession must have been rather low.

Theo's profession was rather in those areas where fine-motor skills were in demand, such as rope maker, baker, or tailor.

Genealogical research on descendants on the female line is demanding and time-consuming since every time women married, they adopted their husband's name.

[17] From the list of twelve, genealogical research was able to determine the names of fifteen possible descendants of the top candidates.

They were announced to the press together with the list of the twelve candidates on 10 March 2010, in the hope that descendants still living would recognise relatives.

The following information on the life circumstances and family situation of the first two candidates, who could have been Theo, is based on the one hand on the research of several genealogists of the Citizen Science Basel (BBS), Marina Zulauf, Ursula Fink, Diana Gysin, and Beat Stadler, who searched the various archives, and on the other hand on genealogical and job-specific research.

What the men have in common is that they both had a "migrant background", i.e. their families came to Basel from outside the city in the hope of a better economic future.

In October 1808 he was accepted into the Zunft zum Himmel ("Guild to the Sky") in Basel as a glazier on the basis of a settlement and trade permit.

It is also conceivable, however, that she advanced a disease so that her husband would receive an honest grave inside the churchyard and not be buried outside the cemetery walls, as was customary for suicides at the time.

In August 1818 she married master glazier Adam Uehlinger, had two more children, died on 26 June 1839 at the age of 55 and left behind a considerable fortune of almost 20'000 francs.

On 2 March 1786, the professor of theology Jakob Meyer and the master dyer and Grand Councillor Achilles Miville were entered into the baptism register of the Theodorskirch as his godparents – perhaps a sign of charity towards the suffering family.

The family probably lived in poor conditions in two or three subletted rooms in the district of the parish of St. Theodor in Kleinbasel.

Of her seven children, the three youngest died as infants, the second son, Jacob Conrad Roth, drowned in the Rhine at the age of thirteen.

In the year 2001, historian Fabian Link created a facial reconstruction of Theo under the guidance of anthropologist and sculptor Gyula Skultéty.

Using newly developed methods, Forensic Genetics in Berlin managed in 2015 to isolate fragments of Theo's nuclear DNA from a bone sample.