Cold Case Reopened: The Princes in the Tower Read Online Free PDF

chest as a human bone was removed in order to hide the theft. This adds further credence to the eyewitness statement regarding the scraps of cloth and velvet that were said to surround the bones. The presence of velvet suggests these were high status individuals and that the age of the skeletons could not have been from the dim and distant past as velvet was a relatively recent fabric.  

    2.The heights of the skeletons would be close to what we might expect for boys of the princes' age. However, my gut feeling is that the height for the elder boy is a little low. A point that also rings a few alarm bells in my mind is the fact that the skeletons would suggest boys who were slender in appearance. We have very few contemporary reports describing the appearance of the princes, so we don’t know a great deal about their build.  
         
        Contemporary portraits are few and far between, with the quality of those available being extremely poor. However, King Edward IV was both a very tall man (the tallest monarch to ever sit on the throne at 6 foot 3) and extremely well built. Would it not be likely that he would have passed these genes on to at least one of his two sons? In addition, both princes would have had a far higher protein intake than would be expected for a normal citizen. This should have promoted growth in both boys. However, the fact that neither boy had fully gone through puberty yet might explain this. There could have been both height spurts and muscular development (leading to skeletal development) to come.  

    3.I was particularly concerned about the dental evidence that was discussed in this paper.

    It is true that it is far easier to predict the age of a younger skeleton than it is of one that has reached adulthood, but I felt that the age estimations in this report were simply far too precise and were, possibly, guided by what they wanted the end result to be.  
    In April 2001 The British Journal of Dentistry published an article about forensic dentistry. It stated that using the molars as an age determining means in children gives us an age with a possible error of plus or minus 4 years. Based on the ages that Wright and Tanners reported this would actually put the elder skeleton to be anywhere from 8.5 years old to 16.5 years old and the younger one to be anywhere from 6 years old to 14 years old. I used a mean point in their estimations to work this out. If you factor in that these examinations were conducted in 1933 without modern methods, you might expect a higher error than plus or minus 4 years.  
    4.It is a key fact that the sex of children could not be determined. We have no firm evidence that these skeletons are even male.

    5.It is known that King Edward V was receiving regular visits from a physician called Doctor John Argentine whilst in the Tower. It has been suggested that these visits were due to pain in Edward’s face and jaw. However, these suggestions are probably due to the findings of this report and there is in fact no certain reason why Edward was being seen by Doctor Argentine. These visits could simply have been the normal course of events to ensure the health of the young king. The fact that the Prince of Wales and   subsequently the king were unwell would surely have been documented somewhere. However, there is no trace of any such report in contemporary records.

    6.There have been subsequent reports written by notable academics regarding the presence of blood on the skull of the elder skeleton. Some have backed Tanner and Wright's report whilst others have suggested that it might not be blood. Without further examination it is not possible to determine if blood was present or not.  

    7.We don’t know how old these skeletons are. Some academics have suggested that they might even date from Roman times, although this would seem to be highly unlikely, both when you consider the age of the White Tower and the possible presence of velvet on the remains.   However,