Eating The Zoo: William Buckland and the Birth of Dinosaurs

Did you know the man who named the very first dinosaur also tried to eat every animal in the world?
Welcome to the utterly chaotic world of William Buckland—the 19th-century theologian, pioneering geologist, and the official father of paleontology.
​Long before Jurassic Park, Buckland was rewriting Earth's history. He discovered and named the Megalosaurus (the first scientifically described dinosaur), and pioneered the study of fossilized feces (coprolites).
​But William wasn't just a genius; he was an eccentric with a great big, neon lit, flashing E. From his infamous "zoophagous" culinary quest to eat his way through the animal kingdom (including bluebottles, panthers, and allegedly the preserved heart of a French king) Buckland's life reads like fiction.
​In this episode, we cover:

​The Megalosaurus Discovery: How a jawbone changed science forever.

​The Eccentric Gourmet: The truth behind his bizarre eating habits and Oxford antics.

And Frank. The even madder, even hungrier son!

​If you love history podcasts, weird science history, dinosaur fossils, and biographies of eccentric geniuses, this is the episode for you!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:17

In a world where God had laid the earth out in neat, predictable layers, one man found something that didn't fit. He found a jawbone with sharp jagged teeth, each bigger than the size of a human hand. And with that jawbone, he found a time before history. A time when the world was ruled by giant creatures, so monstrous. They defied every scripture, every figure, and every logic that church ought to protect. And although he was a trail-blazing genius of theology and a pioneer of paleontology, he was also an absolute madman. He famously kept a pet hyena, allowed his children to ride giant horses like ponies around his garden, and most notoriously made it his personal gastronomic mission to conceive every animal species known to man. He talked about someone away everything from panther to crocodile, and he once finished off the preserved heart of a French king. Most people discover history through books. But today, we're wading in with a rock hammer and a dinner fork.

SPEAKER_02 1:33

I'm Steve, he's Neil, and this is Honorable Merchants.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Honorable Merchants. Hello, listener. How are you today? I hope you've uh had your breakfast, I hope you've had your lunch or your tea or your dinner, whatever it is you may have eaten last, because today's episode might leave you feeling a little bit ravenous, a bit peckish. But none of us are going to be able to eat or sit down or relax or do anything until we know whether he's here and he's okay. So let's welcome it into the podcast.

SPEAKER_02 2:17

Hello, Neil. Hello, Steve. How you doing?

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, I'm alright, thank you very much. Neil? Good. Have you had your breakfast, tea, lunch, dinner, whatever you want to call it?

SPEAKER_02 2:28

All together at the same time, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Give it all together. You see you have one the other day, but it's all right. Corn flakes and gravy.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_01 2:36

Anyway, for the listener Neil, for the listener today, could you please give us your dinosaur impressions? That was a very good in fact. Are you sure that was you? There's not a dinosaur in your room with you there.

SPEAKER_02 2:52

That was me. That was you, was it? That was me, all me. I'll normally go to sound like a uh velociraptor.

SPEAKER_01 3:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

They're very good dinosaur impressions. You may be wondering why I'm asking you to do dinosaur impressions.

SPEAKER_02 3:09

I wasn't wondering, yeah, but um I'll just do it anyway, don't I?

SPEAKER_01 3:12

We'll find out, shall we, listener? Please. Why we're asking Neil to do dinosaur impressions today. Very good as they were.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

I know they were.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

In the latter third of the eighteenth century, Neil.

SPEAKER_02 3:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

So this is your seventeen hundreds.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Seventeen hundreds, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:30

The Reverend Charles Buckland served as a rector of Templeton and Trusham. A rector? Two small settlements in the heart of picturesque Devon in the south west of England.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

I know where that is, I know where Devon is. They make things so creamy.

SPEAKER_01 3:44

One of my favourite headlines ever in the newspaper, if you call it a newspaper, was The Sunday Sport, when they had an article about the lack of sperm donors in Devon, and the headline was Devon wants your cream, which I thought was very funny. Whether it was a true story and they made it up for the headline. I don't get it. Don't ya? No. No. Well, maybe perhaps afterwards we'll have a chat.

SPEAKER_02 4:10

This please.

SPEAKER_01 4:11

It's not one for the listener.

SPEAKER_02 4:13

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 4:14

We'll have a chat.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

The rector. Remember we were talking about the rector, weren't we?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

You mentioned a rector, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:20

I did, didn't I? He was, of course, the Reverend Charles Buckland.

SPEAKER_02 4:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:25

Although he served the area of Templeton and Trusham.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Oh, okay, that's a nice area. Both came with T.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

He actually lived in Axminster.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Oh, so he had to commute.

SPEAKER_01 4:39

He had to commute on the train. Where his son William Buckland was born on the twelfth of March seventeen eighty-four. Billy Buckland? Billy Buckland was born in 1784 on the twelfth of March. As soon as William was old enough, the pair would spend long, tranquil afternoons together in the local countryside. Oh, doing what? Father and son collecting fossil shells, including ammonites from quarries, which Vera then studied back at home. Although how they got an entire quarry home is unclear.

SPEAKER_02 5:14

Well, I'd probably perhaps say moved their home to the quarry.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Well that would make more sense. William was a bright boy and educated first at Blundell School in Tiverton or Blundells, which is in Devon.

SPEAKER_02 5:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:29

Before parting with his parents when he was sent to board at the prestigious Winchester College. Winchester. Oh And if you don't know the English public school system, listener, Winchester, we spoke about rugby school in the previous episode. Winchester is another well-to-do school for the Hoity Toity.

SPEAKER_02 5:49

It's for parents that have jumpers over their shoulders.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

It's for parents with lots and lots of money.

SPEAKER_02 5:54

Yeah, convertible than jumpers over their shoulders and yellow cord trousers.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

In fact, our recent Prime Minister Rishi Sunak went to Winchester College, the the billionaire former Prime Minister of Rishi Sunak. So you can spell on the the type of people that would send their children there. He left Winchester College and then went on to a scholarship at Corpus Christi College in Oxford. Where of course he read geology thanks to the interest in fossils and rocks he had shared with his father.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

I like a fossil and a rock.

SPEAKER_01 6:28

Do you?

SPEAKER_02 6:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

You are a bit of a fossil. Where does the rock come in?

SPEAKER_02 6:33

I like brown rocks.

SPEAKER_01 6:34

They're your favourite type of rocks, are they?

SPEAKER_02 6:37

Yeah. I like the brown ones.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Do you get your rocks off? Sometimes off, honey, do you?

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah. Especially when I see a brown one.

SPEAKER_01 6:46

Guess what happened to William?

SPEAKER_02 6:48

He um became a Formula One driver.

SPEAKER_01 6:54

No. He went on to obtain his MA in eighteen oh eight, became a fellow of Corpus Christi in eighteen oh nine, and was ordained as a priest, eventually working his way up to become a dean of Westminster Abbey. Why did he change his name? He didn't change his name to Dean.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Oh, I always thought they were dean I always thought they were called Dean.

SPEAKER_01 7:18

Just thought they were sort of oh Dean! Dean! And you'd like to be the Dean of Westminster Abbey, would you? Oh yes, please. Well you seem very suited to the role. What's your name? Jason. Oh sorry. No. No, that's the first criteria. You have to be called Dean. Exactly. So your your guess, anyway, he he wasn't a Formula One driver. I've read through all of that now. And it doesn't mention that. It was a good guess, though.

SPEAKER_02 7:40

Thank you. Do you know why I come up with that guess? Because he went to Blundell and there's a racing driver called Martin Blundell.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

It's not getting any funnier, is it? Throughout all that, he made frequent fossil hunting trips out on his horse called Derek Phillips.

SPEAKER_02 8:01

What the horse was.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah. To various parts of England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and when time allowed, he'd have Derek Phillips row him over to Europe so he could collect fossils there too.

SPEAKER_02 8:15

What, just send the horse off, or he'd literally ride all the way to France?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

They would go with the horse and the horse would row the boat.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

I'm assuming they were on horse boxes back then. Keep up. So uh he'd have to ride his horse all the way down to Spain.

SPEAKER_01 8:28

He'd have to ride his horse all the way to, I don't know, Portsmouth, and then Derek Phillips would row the boat over across to France or whatever, and then he yeah, he rode Derek Phillips hard.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Did he?

SPEAKER_01 8:40

He gave him a right good riding.

SPEAKER_02 8:42

But you sound like you're enjoying saying that.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

There's some whipping involved as well.

SPEAKER_02 8:45

You definitely sound like you're enjoying saying that now.

SPEAKER_01 8:48

William was and remains of respective scientists in his field.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

Was that the field he was looking for fossils in?

SPEAKER_01 8:54

Yeah. That one.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

Yeah. He excavated one of the oldest human remains ever found.

SPEAKER_02 9:01

Right. Had they know it's got a date in it, because back then they didn't have stuff to test it with, surely.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

He had a coat on in the back of the label. His mum had written his initials in it and the year.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

Okay, thank you. That's it. That's all I needed to know.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

William Wason remains a respected scientist in his field now. We've talked about this, but you kept interrupting. He excavated one of the oldest human remains ever found, and we've discussed in depth how they knew that. He pioneered the modern sciences of geology and paleontology. Do you know what they are?

SPEAKER_02 9:34

They are something to do with paleont.

SPEAKER_01 9:39

To do with what?

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Paleons.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

Paleons? Yeah. Would you like to elaborate? Oh. Okay, whether you've up there, shall we? Well, it's a good guess again, Neil.

SPEAKER_02 9:50

Geology is geos.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Study of rocks and that sort of thing and sediments and the way the world is built. And paleontology is the study of your dinosaur bones.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

So that's educated you today.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Well, I knew paleontology is really because of Ross from Friends, but you don't watch that either. But carry on.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

And in 1824, so let's call it around twenty-five minutes past six, let's call it that. When he revealed the fossilised remains of a large reptilian creature, which he called a megalosaurus.

SPEAKER_02 10:25

Megalosaurus.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

William Buckland, and not you, Neil, despite your claims in your autobiography, became the first person to formally record a dinosaur fossil.

SPEAKER_02 10:36

Well, I had a curry the other night and and that gave me a megasaurus.

SPEAKER_01 10:44

A megasaurus. Yes. So we're being all scientific and serious, and that's what you can come up with.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yep. What about what'd you think? What do you call a dinosaur with no eyes?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Do you think it's aurus?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Yes. There you go, you see?

SPEAKER_01 11:03

It's more than a dinosaur does.

SPEAKER_02 11:06

Anyway. What am I like? What are you like?

SPEAKER_01 11:11

Of course. William was chosen by God to be an Englishman. As all the best people are.

SPEAKER_02 11:16

Of course, yes. That's very lucky for us, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Yes, and so he wasn't going to rest on his laurels, was he?

SPEAKER_02 11:23

No. What are these laurels? Everyone says they're going to rest on laurels. Well, don't go into it now because it'll be boring.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, and we don't because we're Englishmen. Onwards and upwards, what what? Old B. He said, for king and country. King and country, for looping back around, touch base with 1813 now, Neil.

SPEAKER_02 11:42

I'd like a loop round, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

Reach around, you like. William was appointed reader in Meneurology at Corpus Christi in Oxford, one of your Oxford universities.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

So he just used to read out loud to people or just Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

About minerals and that.

SPEAKER_02 12:01

That was a smashing classroom.

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Clad in long black robes, grasping a large hyena skull in one hand, and sporting an ever present blue pouch at his side. That pouch now, that pouch was stuffed with mammoth teeth and skin and assorted dinosaur crap.

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Assorted dinosaur crap?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

Quite literally. They're called coprolites.

SPEAKER_02 12:28

Alright, that's a possible going dinosaur sh that's your fossilized dinosaur poop.

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Dinosaur poop. William would give wild and passionate lectures packed with rude jokes and profanities and physical imitations of dinosaurs to keep his students entertained.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

Did he call that bag that blue pouch Steve?

SPEAKER_01 12:47

Why?

SPEAKER_02 12:48

Because that's a bag of shit.

SPEAKER_01 12:57

In eighteen eighteen in eighteen eighteen he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Um in eighteen eighteen he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and that year he approached the Prince Regent later to become George the Fourth. Right. To endow an additional readership this time in geology.

SPEAKER_02 13:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Okay, said George, let's throw that one in the think walk and see what sizzles. He wanted geology, so he went to George Drass for it.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:30

Anyway, he got it.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

But um I bet he did.

SPEAKER_01 13:33

In eighteen twenty-four he became president of the Geological Society of London.

SPEAKER_02 13:38

I bet that's a cracking nut out.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

But his big year came one minute later in eighteen twenty-five, when he was elected a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and became the canon of Christchurch.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

The canon of Christchurch?

SPEAKER_01 13:57

Yeah, that could shoot people out of him. But more than that, Neil. Hello, Deal.

SPEAKER_02 14:01

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 14:02

Still there.

SPEAKER_02 14:03

No.

SPEAKER_01 14:05

How about no?

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Oh yes, I am sorry. How are you? Oh, yeah, though. So you're there all along. My mistake.

SPEAKER_01 14:10

You tricky trickster. More than that, Neil. Hello, Deal. In December of that year, he married Mary Moreland of Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Who was an accomplished illustrator and a collector of Stamps? No, try again.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Ugh. Smurfs.

SPEAKER_01 14:31

Oh, that's a good guess. That's my that's what I'd written down here initially. Fossils.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

Oh. Fossils.

SPEAKER_01 14:38

That's what attracted them to one another, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Yes. Yeah, okay. My fossil.

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Guess what they did on their honeymoon?

SPEAKER_02 14:47

They went fossil.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

Yes. They went around touring Europe with visits to famous geologists and geological sites. She continued to assist him with his work. Dirty kid I bet she did. As well as having some they had nine children.

SPEAKER_02 15:04

Well, well, it's not much to do looking at fields, is it?

SPEAKER_01 15:07

So I don't know whether they had the nine children on honeymoon. Well that was quick, wasn't it? Oh, five of whom survived to adulthood.

unknown 15:15

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 15:16

So there's you taking the mick out of them there, well, I was trying to be serious, and only five of them made it to adulthood. Their son Frank Buckland became a well known practical naturalist, author, and paleontologist. Inspector of salmon fisheries. Oh surprised you didn't say that. The clues are all in there on the bit before. We will be coming back to him later, Neil.

SPEAKER_02 15:46

Okay. Believe me. I'm excited about that.

SPEAKER_01 15:51

Good. Because Neil, all of that was just a preamble, a mere appetizer, and a moose boosh, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 15:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:00

Because from this point on, those with an aversion to stories about eating meat be warned.

unknown 16:07

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

If you're one of your vegans they have these days, or even one of those vegetarian types.

SPEAKER_02 16:15

What about a pescatarian place? Is that a little born in the mind just because he's eating most meat? Does fish come under the meat category?

SPEAKER_01 16:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Is it?

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

If you were lucky enough to be invited to dinner at the Bookland residence sometime in the 1830s.

SPEAKER_02 16:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:34

Were you? Were you ever lucky? I wasn't.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

Yeah, it's a nice time to eat though in it at that time.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

Yeah, about half past six.

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:41

Do you ever go to the Booklands?

SPEAKER_02 16:44

No, I've I've never been, to be honest, no.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

No, I never had. What you'd find there is a house bursting with books, rocks and fossils. You'd meet Billy, who was William's pet hyena. Witness rambunctious children. Who? Rambunctious children. That's a good word, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 17:04

It's a good word.

SPEAKER_01 17:05

Write that down. We'll use it in more Rambunctious Children. Running about between guinea pigs, snakes, frogs, ferrets, hawks, owls, cats, dogs, and at least one pony. In the house? And inside and outside. Unless they were outside, where they like to stand on large pet tortoises while foxes and chickens caused absolute havoc. Does that give you a a an image of this house?

SPEAKER_02 17:31

It does, yeah. It reminds me of not wanting to live next door to them.

SPEAKER_01 17:34

You've got all this all this chaos, all this rambunctiousness. We've gone back to that word again. And for some reason only the tortoises weren't allowed inside. I don't know why that would be. Quite exhausting, you might think, O'Neill.

SPEAKER_02 17:45

Quite exhausting and and quite a pungent smell, one would think.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

But soon dinner arrived beneath a silver cloch or cloch, if you want to say that, placed at the centre of the table, and the table has been inlaid with coprolites.

SPEAKER_02 18:02

Coprolites.

SPEAKER_01 18:03

Do you remember what they were?

SPEAKER_02 18:04

They're some sort of stone, aren't they?

SPEAKER_01 18:07

They're dinosaur poops.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Oh. So they're having dinner and they've got dinosaur poop on the table.

SPEAKER_01 18:13

Inlaid into the table.

SPEAKER_02 18:15

With coprol poop. Beautiful. Nice. My kind of table that is. Not.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

Your stomach begins to rumble now.

SPEAKER_02 18:23

You wouldn't. Yeah, it'd probably be gib.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

As you anticipate a ham or maybe a roast bird, or a juicy joint of beef. And then with a flourish.

SPEAKER_02 18:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

The lid of the silver clutch is lifted and drum roll plays. It's a mouse on toast.

SPEAKER_02 18:48

A mouse on toast.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

And maybe you were lucky. William had a fondness for mice served on toast. But he said that the common garden mole was the worst tasting thing he'd ever eaten until the day he chewed on a blue bottle fly.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

How were the man?

SPEAKER_01 19:05

I don't know what's the matter with him. It's one of the worst things in the world when you're out and about, then all of a sudden a fly flies into your mouth and you sort of Anyway, you see Nil, you see. William He believed the stomach rules the world. I think it was a song by Tears Sophia's, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 19:27

It was, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:28

And his ambition was to eat every single species of animal on God's green earth, a hobby that is called zoofaji.

SPEAKER_02 19:37

Zoofa G.

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Zoo Fagy.

SPEAKER_02 19:40

Zoo Fagy.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Suffiji, or one word.

SPEAKER_02 19:45

Sufji.

SPEAKER_01 19:46

Sufegy.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

I'm saying that, Zoo Fiji.

SPEAKER_01 19:50

That's it. You said Su Fagi. Like it's a lady called Su and her surname was Faggy.

SPEAKER_02 19:55

No, Zoo. That sounds sound Zoof. Is it Zoo Fadge? Zoo Fagy. Suffer G. Okay, well. I'm sure we've got it. The message is there now, it's sunk in.

SPEAKER_01 20:04

The message is there and it's sunk in. Yeah. Like some of these meals you may have had if you went to William Butland for your dinner. You may have easily been served hedgehogs. Or roast ostrich. Poi pois. That's your seafood. A sea slug. Crocodile steaks. Mm. Earwigs. What? And horror of horrors. What's the worst thing do you think you could put it out in front of you there? When he lifts up that silver closh and you'd be like, oh my god The worst thing I could think of is probably feet.

SPEAKER_02 20:50

Cooked puppies. Oh, got to say, what's the matter with the man? What belie oh I don't like him. Really don't like him, Steve.

SPEAKER_01 20:58

They must have been sausage dogs. At least they were they were definitely hot dogs.

SPEAKER_02 21:07

Why is he doing that? Is it just Is he just a fetish man or is he just barbaric and want to kill everything and eat it?

SPEAKER_01 21:15

Well, we've gone through this if you were listening.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Well what research is it though? It just was to eat everything on earth.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

Yes. Why? Because like you said, it's a fetish and it's a I just want to eat everything on earth and say what I have. One guest reported that William had served soup at a dinner party before informing everyone that it was an alligator he had dissected earlier that day. To the guests' significant shock.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

Do they have buckets next to every chair so they can literally go, Oh, that was I said alligator.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

To previous sanity, when asked if he really had served an alligator, he said, as good as a calf's head as ever wore a coronet.

SPEAKER_02 21:57

Yep. Man as a box of frocks.

SPEAKER_01 21:59

He couldn't have said that. Any clearer, could he? No. Another account says that William served his guest a pickled horse tongue without telling them what they were eating until their eating was done. And once when he was visiting an Italian cathedral, which they have over there in Italy.

SPEAKER_02 22:16

Yes, I would say it'd be an Italy one, Italian one.

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Yeah, Italian cathedrals tend to only be in Italy. I can't think of any here.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

I can't think of anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

No. A priest was keen to show him a miracle. But he was dirty boy. The floor was slick with an ever flowing blood of sacrificed martyrs. Well I am raised a curious eyebrow.

SPEAKER_02 22:38

Jumped in it and started licking the floor.

SPEAKER_01 22:40

Knelt and running his tongue across the ground before rising again, smacking his lips and declaring the miracle blood was in fact bat urine. And he knew this because he'd had it before.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

Bat urine.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Bat urine. Bat urine.

SPEAKER_02 22:59

Well when you get a toilet Batman, save that because I fancy a drink.

SPEAKER_01 23:02

He'd probably got some bat piss in his utility belt. You never know when you need it. But his biggest legend was created when William was a friend of the. He'd got his anti-sharp repellent spray, didn't he? He always he has everything, Batman.

SPEAKER_02 23:17

He did. He had his he had a uh safe cracker, three second save cracker.

SPEAKER_01 23:22

Yeah, for cracking safes in three seconds.

SPEAKER_02 23:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:25

He's got everything. But Neil, back to William. William Buckland.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:30

Not Bruce Wayne.

unknown 23:31

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

If if Bruce Wayne was indeed Batman. That's a secret. Secret identity. If you heard that, Listener. Sorry, but keep it shush. Yeah. Spoilers. Neil, William Buckland, his biggest legend was created when his friend, the Archbishop of York.

SPEAKER_02 23:52

Yeah, I know that one. I didn't know the first one.

SPEAKER_01 23:54

His name was Edward Venables Vernon Harcourt.

SPEAKER_02 23:58

Oh lovely.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

Lovely. No. What would he do if his son wanted to double barrel his own name? How long did he go for? Edward Venables Vernon Harcourt Smith.

SPEAKER_02 24:10

Lovely.

SPEAKER_01 24:11

Then you got Edward Venables Vernon Harcourt Smith Jones III or everything. It just goes on. It's ridiculous. Anyway, Neil. Anyway. Hello, Neil.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Hello.

SPEAKER_01 24:22

Anyway, Edward Venables Vernon Harcourt, or Lord Harcourt, for sure, withdrew a shriveled object.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

I'm sorry.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Dirty boy. Yeah, yeah. He withdrew a shriveled object about the size of a walnut from a silver snuff box. Following his execution in the French Revolution.

SPEAKER_02 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

The heart of Louis the Fourteenth was stolen.

SPEAKER_02 24:50

Someone stole his heart.

SPEAKER_01 24:51

He was dead.

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:53

It didn't mean like someone stole his heart as he foo. Look at them over there. It meant they literally stole his heart after he was dead and they cut his head off.

SPEAKER_02 25:01

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Hundred and forty-ish years later, Lord Harcourt had somehow acquired its mummified remains and wanted his friend's opinion. Instead, William inspected the object for a moment or two, then popped it in his gob, giving it a few thoughtful chews, he swallowed it and told his astonished friend, I've eaten many strange things, but have never eaten the heart of a king before.

SPEAKER_02 25:25

So his mate got something wrinkly out, and then this guy put it in his mouth and chewed it.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

And swallowed it.

SPEAKER_02 25:31

And he didn't have food poison or anything like that from it.

SPEAKER_01 25:35

Does it recall? That's a very good question, but doesn't recall. Anyway, Neil.

SPEAKER_02 25:39

Yeah. Hello, Neil. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

You feeling peckish yet?

SPEAKER_02 25:43

No. Ah from it.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Remember William's son, Frank?

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Yeah. Don't say yeah to him as well.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

He wrote in his diary recalling a time when he was just seven years old.

SPEAKER_02 25:54

Right.

SPEAKER_01 25:55

So this is Frank now. A live turtle was sent down from London. My father tied a long rope round the turtle's fin and let him have a swim in Mercury. Shall I be doing this in my acting or just tell you what it says?

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Uh to you. I'm I'm easy we are the way.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

So I'm imagining I'm a seven year old boy, obviously quite well to do. Quite well to do, little boy. Shall I do it like this? A live turtle that was sent down from London. My father tied a long rope around the turtle's fin and let him have a swim in Mercury. And this is coming out of the character now. Mercury is the ornamental water in the middle of Christchurch quad, not the highly toxic, naturally occurring silver white metal. I was gonna say.

SPEAKER_02 26:49

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

That becomes a liquid at room temperature.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Yeah, I see.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

We're not talking about that, just to clear that. Because you were gonna say that, I shouldn't imagine.

SPEAKER_02 26:58

I said it wasn't I just had it on lit on the tip of my tongue.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah, but it's poisonous.

SPEAKER_02 27:03

Oh, I didn't have it on the tip of my tongue.

SPEAKER_01 27:04

Did you say you did then? Trying to impress the listener.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 27:08

I'm back in embodying the seven-year-old uh Frank.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

Yeah, I bet you are. Did you want to church?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

The turtle swam while I held the string. I recollect too that my father made me stand on the back of the turtle while he held me on. I was then but a little fellow, and I had a ride for a few yards as it swam round and round in the pond. As a treat, I was allowed to assist the cook to cut off the turtle's head in the college kitchen. The head, after it was separated, nicked the finger of one of the kitchen boys who was opening the beast's knife. The same head is now in my museum. So that's a little story Frank wrote in his diary recording his childhood, which all sounds to me to be pretty normal, doesn't it?

SPEAKER_02 27:52

He's not going to grow up with any mental problems or no, I don't think there'll be any mental issues at all with that family.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

As mad as a bottle of chips, that's what they were. Frank, or Francis, to give him his full name, was a short man with a consistently dishevelled appearance. But was jovial and popular with a childlike view of the world, like Alexander Boris DeFle Johnson, give him his full name, who was our previous Prime Minister. We're doing well with previous prime ministers here. Eating was one of the first things that landed Frank in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 28:31

According to William, when his son was only two and a half years old, he ate the end of a candle. Right. So it was a perfectly fair and rational punishment. What would you do if your your sons had eaten the end of a candle when they were two and a half years old?

SPEAKER_02 28:46

Eaten the end of a candle?

SPEAKER_01 28:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:48

What would I have done? I'd have put all the candles out of reach.

SPEAKER_01 28:52

Well, that sounds like a reasonable response. And probably, I don't know, give them a bit of a talk as to why eating candles is not a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 29:01

So you'd uh educate them to say that that's not food and don't ever do it again, but then you'd make sure that you'd ri put them all out of reach.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

Some may say Neil. You'd enlighten them because it's a candle, you see. Anyway, William didn't share your liberal woke lefty views.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

He said you'd probably put a bit better off with a bit of salt on that.

SPEAKER_01 29:24

So, as a perfectly rational and fair punishment, he shoved the toddler inside a thorny furze bush for a whole ten minutes and made him stay there. He probably had to stay there for the full ten minutes while William went off to collect his father of the year award from Marvin Gay Sr. Go and Google that one, kids. That's one for the ages. Don't you remember that one, Neil? Marvin Gay Marvin Gay, the singer.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Let's get it all Marvin Gay.

unknown 30:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:01

His dad was Marvin Gay as well. And it was him who shot and killed Marvin Gay. Because he thought Marvin Gay was singing the devil's music. That's one up from shoving into a thorny furze bush. To be fair, that had already been done, hadn't it? Frank survived spiky bushes and being bitten by dead turtleheads to go on, like his father, and study at Oxford. Right. He trained as a surgeon and became known for trading fish for human corpse parts to further his studies.

SPEAKER_02 30:34

Oh mate, don't suppose you've got an arm, have you? Well, it cost you three trout.

SPEAKER_01 30:38

Truth be told, O'Neil. He wasn't a very good student and eventually strayed from his medical path. Instead, he travelled extensively and wrote popular articles about the natural world, and his modern casual tone was so different from the stuffy literature of Victorian Britain, he became quite the famous whoopsie.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

I think he did leave his medical pass because he's doing his surgery it was like a buffet table for him, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_01 31:05

Growing up in a house overrunning with exotic pets and with a dinner table buttling under the weight of more of them, it's no wonder that Frank began to own his own little zoo at college. Friends and guests entering his chambers described the terrible smell. They said that on stepping inside you would see an eagle, a jackal, beside marmots, guinea pigs, squirrels and dormice, an adder, and many harmless snakes and slow worms, tortoises, green frogs, and a chameleon. How did they see the chameleon?

SPEAKER_02 31:39

Yeah. Not a very good one, was it?

SPEAKER_01 31:42

No. Skeletons and stuffed specimens were numerous. And the smell that was from one of the cats Frank had dissected and was now keeping in a box under his bed. Serial killer. I was just gonna say, it's giving off serial killer vibes, any of this fellow. If anyone got murdered at that college, he's the first person you gotta go and see there. His most notorious pet was a bear cub named Tig. Tig. Frank used to like to dress him in a Christchurch college cap and gown, and the pair would attend wine parties. Sometimes, not at all mad Frank, took rats and the defanged snakes from his coat at parties to further the entertainment.

SPEAKER_02 32:30

So he'd whip out his snake.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Making sure of course it couldn't spit over anybody.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Yeah. This is my defanged snake, everybody.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Rather curious pink head, isn't it? Yes. Do you like to give him a stickle under the chin? He likes that. He also owned several monkeys throughout his life. Two of them called Jacko and Jenny. He served pork to every Sunday and beer during the week. When Jacko died, he turned his hide into a tablecloth as an act of memorial.

SPEAKER_02 33:04

I've I've literally got nothing on this.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Like his dad, Neil, Frank liked to serve his dinner guest food that suited an acquired taste.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Yeah. Psycho taste.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

Like steaming plates of boiled elephant trunk. Fried porse head, roasted giraffe necks, and rhinoceros pie.

SPEAKER_02 33:27

Where the butcher's, where's he buying it from?

SPEAKER_01 33:31

He was good for uh your conservatism, wasn't he? Yeah. Save the wildlife and all that, and he's off eating it, chucking the rest of the elephant away and just eating his trunk. Yeah. Well he did for the rest of it. Mind you, they say, how'd you eat an elephant? That's one bit at a time, isn't it? As well as your rhinoceros pie, etc. He had Boa constrictor, sea slugs, and earwigs, although he ended up hating the last two. Apparently. He didn't like them very much. So sea slugs and earwigs, uh Boa constrictor wasn't so bad.

SPEAKER_02 34:03

Well, that's that's that's something out of it, I suppose. Imagine what his turds look like.

SPEAKER_01 34:09

Yeah, you're right in there, Frank. You've been in there for fifty minutes. Yeah, I'm alright. Literally breaking off a killer's finger in here. When he heard that a panther had recently died at a zoo, he had the curator dig up the corpse and send over some panther chops. Sadly or thankfully, if you happened to be any kind of animal within hundred feet of him, the Reverend William Buckland died on August 14th, 1856, at the age of seventy-two, most probably from dementia and other complications. Wonder what they could have been.

SPEAKER_02 34:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:51

Tape worms. Trying to shit out a gorilla or something, probably. He was buried in Iceland in Oxfordshire, ironically becoming food for worms. Yeah. Funny how much that's full circle, isn't it? A few years later, in 1860, Frank founded the Acclamation Society of Britain. Its goal was to find and introduce exotic fauna to the UK in order to gain additional food sources. The society dinners were relatively tame and included things like Syrian pigs and sheep from China.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 35:28

That's probably a good old British sheep. What's the matter with him?

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Oh yeah, but if it's made from China, it'd be crunchy, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_01 35:34

No, it came from China. They weren't made of China. The sheep came so the pigs came from Syria.

unknown 35:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:40

And the sheep came from China.

SPEAKER_02 35:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 35:43

Because in the nineteenth century there were so many of them about, Frank pushed for the general consumption of horse meat.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 35:53

But decided that he didn't really like the taste of it.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

So he thought he'd put them in some crispy pancakes.

SPEAKER_01 36:00

So he suggested it be served to prisoners instead.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Right. Perhaps just leave the horses alone.

SPEAKER_01 36:07

Perhaps just leave them alone, yeah. Then it tastes very nice, just leave them. What would your Marvel superhero name be? I think I've just discovered mine. Mine would be Panther Chops.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Panther Chops.

SPEAKER_01 36:19

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

I don't know, really.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Hey up, hey up. Who's gonna save us? Don't fear, citizen. It's Panther Chops. You can see it already. I'll be I'll be ringing Disney, see if I'm getting the new Avengers film.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

Yeah, do it.

SPEAKER_01 36:40

Frank died on December the nineteenth, eighteen eighty, at the age of just fifty-four.

SPEAKER_02 36:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 36:47

And although he was arguably madder than his dad, his legacy slipped into obscurity. Whereas for his dad of Billy Buckland, William Buckland, a ridge on the moon called Dorsam Buckland has been named after him. He has a bust in the South Isle of Westminster Abbey, a few blue plaques scattered here and there, a type of moss named after him, and a village in northwest Alaska.

SPEAKER_02 37:23

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:24

And this is all to do with his scientific work and none of it to do with his dinner parties.

SPEAKER_02 37:28

Right.

SPEAKER_01 37:29

We'll leave a final word to another obscure scientist that you probably wouldn't have heard of, shall we? Because he sort of summed it up. His this bloke, his name was Charles Darwin.

SPEAKER_02 37:40

Yeah. Never heard of him.

SPEAKER_01 37:41

Never heard of him at all. Anyway. He read his autobiography. So his autobiography was you've written yours, I mean you've claimed you in you invented dinosaurs. We've proven that one wrong. But this fellow, this Charles Darwin, said Buckland, this is William Buckland is talking about, not Frank. Buckland, though very good humoured and good natured, seemed to me a vulgar and almost coarse man. He was incited more by craving for notoriety, which sometimes made him act like a buffoon than by a love of science.

SPEAKER_02 38:16

Yeah, I agree with that.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

But that, Leo, is the tale of William Butland and his son Frank.

SPEAKER_02 38:23

He's probably eaten that.

SPEAKER_01 38:24

He's probably eaten the tale of the tale, the tale of the tale of our tale, has been consumed by William Buckland.

SPEAKER_02 38:32

I pfft I just think, what an idiot. Perhaps his science he thinks it's good, but what the hell would you think to yourself? Well, what's that horrible squidly thing on the floor wiggling around? I'm gonna eat it. I like that. Let's see what give it a go, see what it's like.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

There's some puppies over there, have them shaved and bring them to my table.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

People are still going around there for dinner. Why would you do that? You'll go around for dinner, yeah. Make sure you bring the bag.

SPEAKER_01 38:57

Anyway, listener, thank you very much for listening to yet another episode of Honorable Mentions going to be sick. We'll see you again next week. Go off and enjoy yourself a naked mole rat with some riveter. And we will uh see you soon.

SPEAKER_00 39:14

Bye! Honorable mentions. I'm Batman. The Joker has just told me that there are a couple of new guys in town going around saying that I carry my own pee pee in my utility belt and that I smell of pee-pee too. And you know what? That's hurt my feelings, and Alfred said it isn't true because I smell of sweaty rubber and latex. So there, they go by the name Honorable Mentions, and I need your help flushing this duplicitous duo out into the open. Please subscribe to their podcast, and that way more people will get to hear about them, and eventually there'll be no place left to hide. The Riddler has sent me some challenges in the past, but who the hell gave these guys access to a microphone and a podcast is beyond me. What do they want? I have to find them before it's all too late. Commissioner Gordon has thrown up the bat signal, but I'm going to try communicating directly on social media or at honorable mentionspod at gmail.com. I took some criminal down last night and he gave me a name. Said the whole thing is researched by Stephen Webb, and it is an Uncover Brothers production. Somebody called Bruce Wayne. Never heard of him, but I'm told he's a handsome guy and definitely does not think of PP. He's been a member of the Pepe and the Bandits Junior fan club for years now. You should listen to them wherever you scream your music. They have a loose connection with these arch mysteries. Something to do with the theme tune they were forced to write and perform. Justice will prevail good people of gossip. I will speak to that.