It's amazing what we can discover if we just dig a little bit.

That was the feeling conservationists had in 1998 when they began restoration work on

a house in London that had been built in the 1730s.

It had originally been built as a lodging house but had fallen into disrepair during

the late 20th century and it needed work.

In the basement of the house they opened a hidden room and discovered something horrific

beneath the ancient dirt floor.

Human remains.

In fact, there were over 1200 bones belonging to 15 individual bodies, some of whom were

children.

But that's not the most shocking part of this discovery.

This on the bones dated them to the 1760s which is a very specific window of time.

And because of that, we know who rented the house during that time period.

It's a name all of us will recognize too.

Benjamin Franklin.

In fact, this house on Craven Street in London is the only remaining home of his that we

can still explore and he lived there for nearly two decades.

But don't start plotting your historical thriller about a young Ben Franklin who Moonlight says

a serial killer.

Experts are pretty sure they know why the bones are there.

It turns out that Franklin had a friend who was a physician as well as being the son

of the landlady who owned the house.

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