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SWEDENBORG’S SKULL. 1207
In a footnote the Editor of Mr. Hindmarsh’s work, the Rev. E. Made
ley refers to the " Notices respecting the Swedish Church in London,”
by G. W. Carlson, published in Stockholm, in 1852, where the
particulars respecting the re-interment of the skull are related in the
following manner [on p. 119] : "The protocol of the meeting of the
church-committee, on July 4, 1819, contains the following interesting
communication, viz.: The pastor asked permission to present to the
members of the committee the skull of the late Assessor Sweden
borg which (concealing the name of the offender) had been
stolen from the coffin in the vault of the church about a year
and a half ago, and accidentally discovered by the pastor, when
it was just going to be taken to Sweden, to enrich some private
or public collection of curiosities. As it had been taken out
of the coffin once, the pastor thought it ought rather to be
preserved as a curiosity by the church than to be carried abroad;
and as it was well known that resident Swedenborgians had long
wished to obtain the same, and offered considerable sums to acquire
it privately, the pastor desired it to be kept carefully, that it might
not again fall into improper hands.’ The following marginal note
was afterwards appended, "The skull was afterwards deposited again
in the coffin, after a cast had been taken of it. J[ohn] P[eter]
W[åhlin].’"
Mr. Carlson added the following footnote to this account:
"Dr. Wåhlin in his Dagsländor * (Ephemerals) published in Norr
köping in 1846 declares the thief to have been a Captain, named
Ludvig Granholm, who, at a burial in 1817, had gone down into the
vault and abstracted the skull. But not succeeding in selling it, the
same was, after his decease, found in his domicile. However, upon
an examination made some years ago, on the strength of some
scientific tests, † doubts have arisen whether the skull deposited in
the coffin was the right one."
From a son of Dr. Wåhlin, who was living in Stockholm in 1869 ,
the editor of these Documents obtained the following additional
particulars : Dr. Wåhlin, in his ministerial capacity, and thus bound
to secrecy, was called to a person on his deathbed, who confessed
that he had taken Swedenborg’s skull out of his coffin, on the
occasion of a burial ; that Swedenborg’s hair was still on it, which
fact aroused the landlady’s suspicion. After removing the hair, he
Dagsländor ; anteckningar under vistandet i England och Frankrike åren 1818-1832
(Ephemerals, or Notes during a stay in France and England, from 1818-1832).
On scientific grounds it is maintained that the skull which is now in Swedenborg’s
coffin is not a male, but a female skull, and that it is much too small to have been his.
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