Yorkshire & Lincolnshire

Inside Out's Ian Cundall explains how the programme got involved...

The first law of journalism is that there's no such thing as useless information… some of the biggest stories Inside Out has ever covered have come from someone putting together two apparently unrelated scraps of information.

Inside Out's Ian Cundall

So my ears pricked up one morning in 2005 when I heard Sir John Oxford, one of the world's leading experts on flu, appealing on Radio 4 for anyone who might know of a victim of the Spanish Flu pandemic who had also been buried in lead. 

It so happened I thought I did.

The Wolds Waggoners

Nearly 20 years earlier I'd covered the story of one of the UK's last private armies, raised by aristocrat Sir Mark Sykes from the men of his East Yorkshire estate. 

The Wolds Waggoners transported supplies to the Somme battflefield in their traditional horse drawn waggons during WW1.

But the thing that stuck in my mind was the fact that their founder, Sir Mark, had not been allowed to lead them to war. 

He'd been sent off to work for the diplomatic service and died of flu in Paris in 1919.

I knew his body had been shipped home - and considering the family's wealth and the highly contagious nature of 1919 influenza, there had to be a good chance he'd been given a lead coffin.

Extraordinary hunt

I called Professor Oxford and that's how Inside Out become part of one of the most extraordinary hunts of medical history. 

For three and a half years we followed every twist and turn in the laborious process to obtain consent for an exhumation.

Sir Mark's grandson, Sir Tatton Sykes, proved to be the easiest person to convince - he takes an enthusiastic interest in science. 

The church courts, the Health and Safety Executive, the Ministry of Justice and numerous other public bodies took longer to win over.

Confirmation of a lead coffin

The hardest thing to establish was that Sir Mark had indeed been buried in lead. 

Ground penetrating radar was inconclusive and Inside Out's French-speaking researchers, Christine Hamill and Lucy Smickersgill, had little luck with the undertakers of Paris.

In the end the proof came from an unlikely source - Sir Tatton himself flicked through the extraordinarily detailed scrapbook his family keep at Sledmere house and came across a report of the funeral from a long-folded tabloid. 

It included a picture of soldiers straining to lower an obviously extremely heavy coffin into the ground, with a caption describing it as "leaden".

And so it proved… when the gravediggers reached Sir Mark's coffin on 8 September 2008, it was indeed made of lead. 

Could save millions of lives

Sadly it had been perforated and the research team was denied the perfectly preserved body they wanted. 

Luckily, there was enough tissue remaining for them to take samples.

It was third time lucky for the exhumation team - the two previous bodies they'd dug up had proved to have been buried in wood or zinc, despite their families having been charged for lead.

It'll be months before we know whether Sir Mark's exhumation has taken the battle to prevent another flu pandemic any further. 

But I'm proud Inside Out has been part of a project that - without exaggeration - could one day help save millions of lives.

And I still don't think there's any such thing as useless information.