EHO Knows: A Grave Mistake w/ Ben Lees

Shane: [00:00:00] Okay. So, oh, let’s get into politics then. Dodie and Diana, and if we didn’t have enough puns in our first episode, I’m just going to leave this well and truly alone. Uh, welcome back, Ben. week we were talking about, um, working in a cemetery and all that sort of stuff. So just listen to number one, and chances are you’ll be listening to number two straightaway anyway, so I don’t have to introduce Ben.

But, hey, Ben, welcome back.

Ben Lees: Thanks, Shane.

Shane: I noticed you never changed your shirt from last time.

Ben Lees: know. It’s a coincidence. I tell you, I only ever really have one shirt. You don’t pay yet, you’re very well right.

Shane: Yeah, yeah. So, um, so get as much mileage out of it. Now you have to wear that shirt at conference and people will be going, “Oh, you were serious when you said you’ve only got

Ben Lees: It could be my brand. I could, I could just have several of them

Shane: Yeah. Yep, that’s it. So, um, okay. So Dodie and Diana. Um,

Ben Lees: Oh

Shane: we

Ben Lees: God

Shane: explain who [00:01:00] Diana is just for the younger viewers, or is that a safe

Ben Lees: know.

Shane: Like

Ben Lees: that’s right. So you know you’re of a certain age if you know exactly where you were when Diana died, because it was one of those big world events, right? But, um, Princess Di, married to the current king until she died tragically in a car crash after her divorce, and definitely nothing to do with the royal family, uh, when she died in a, a tunnel in Paris.

Shane: Yeah. And no, theories at all as to, yeah, to what it was. Um, also absolutely no jokes floating around

Ben Lees: No idar

Shane: six hours of the ev- event

Ben Lees: know, I know. We’re p- we’re the worst, aren’t we? But, the reason why I raise, um… Sorry, we’re gonna avoid puns, aren’t we? The reasons why I’m talking about Princess Diana is because, um, Dodi Al Fayed, her boyfriend, who died with her in that car in that tragic, uh, accident in Paris, he was, um, [00:02:00] buried in Brookwood and later exhumed out of Brookwood and taken to his private estate.

Lady Di was buried on her family’s estate, um, on consecrated ground, and this is where it’s really useful to talk about because even though they died in the same day, the same time, and they were both buried around the same time, their remains are treated completely differently. So the Victorians, we talked about them last time, when they wrote this 1857 Burial Act, they made a real big distinction between people who were buried on consecrated or non-consecrated ground.

So if you’re a non-consecrated ground person, like Dodi Al Fayed, then the EHO oversees your exhumation. If you’re on consecrated ground, as Diana was, and I’m not suggesting she’d ever be moved, but if she was, it’s the church who oversees the, the exhumation. E- under the same public health legislation, a priest has the same, or, a vicar has exactly the same [00:03:00] role as an EHO.

So

Shane: That’s– and in terms of training and background, they’re, yeah, um

Ben Lees: Very different. Very different. We’re trained for the risks, like, you know, public health risks as

Shane: but, but just putting it out there, if you’re buried in non-consecrated ground, then it’s going to be bacteria that’s going to be, be at risk, and so you need an EHO. But if you’re digging up a church site, it’s gonna be God who’s striking you down, and so you need a priest. So I can see the logic. and so, yes.

At the

Ben Lees: from the… Ah

Shane: of this episode, I want to know which was the joke that people found the most offensive. Um, and it’s gonna be one of those, those obscure throwaway lines that I’m going, “What? Seriously? There was so much more you could have picked on

Ben Lees: Ah, absolutely. Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. And this is one of the problems, is that EHOs really do. We have a sense of humor, we can laugh in the face of a lot of stuff, and so one of the, the key [00:04:00] roles and the reason why the church was involved is because it’s about respecting the dead, right? This was part of the, the legislation, was not just public health, it’s public health and ensuring the, the dead.

Yeah. So I had, uh, actually one clergyman… Because if you’re moving them from consecrated or, or the other way around, from non-consecrated to consecrated ground, you need both a church member and an EHO. So we did a few of these, and what was really funny, one of them sort of said to me, “Oh, this is my first time, and do you know what?

This is just a reverse funeral. We’re just doing a reverse funeral.” And I thought, “Oh my God, yeah, we’re doing a reverse funeral here.” You know? And he’s been trained in doing a funeral, and I haven’t. You know what I mean? Um,

Shane: But

Ben Lees: the

Shane: handing it over to you or were you handing it over to

Ben Lees: other way around, yeah, I was handing it over to him. the health and safety, uh, implications obviously completely disappear the minute we hand over the, the body, right?

But, um, magically they’re gone.

Shane: The smell’s gone. Just

Ben Lees: yeah. But it, it [00:05:00] might be worth noting, the Health and Safety Executive in the UK did a bunch of work on this and basically assessed the risks around, exhumations, and the risk that we’re thinking of, like, you know, getting smallpox or, you know, anthrax or, or any of these sorts of things, they essentially found that all these infectious diseases, AIDS and a- any other kind of virals that you’re looking at, if the body is six months old, if it’s been in the ground for six months, uh, that risk no longer exists pretty much.

For all practical effects, they don’t want– they don’t recommend wearing a mask. They sort of say you should probably wear gloves, but you should probably wear gloves when you’re gardening. Um, you know, the risk of infectious disease is just so tiny, um, after six months. So when we used to get, um, you know, an application to move a body, we’d just say, “Well, we’ll wait six months.”

You know, “Don’t, don’t move the body within the first six months,” and that eliminates the public health risk

Shane: Okay. so I assume the logic is there’s bacteria that [00:06:00] we’re super sensitive to, we don’t want, or viruses or whatever, but after six months, the bacteria that survives in the human body doesn’t have human body to live off anymore.

Ben Lees: Yeah.

Shane: Instead, it’s got effectively dirt, and

Ben Lees: Yeah

Shane: got gardening bacteria

Ben Lees: Indeed.

Shane: than smallpox, um, or

Ben Lees: just in case anyone’s, like, using this advice to go out and dig up a body, there are some factors like the dampness and the soil type and, you know, uh, there is, like, variability, but the, the six-month rule is essentially what the Health and Safety Executive point to

Shane: Yes. so back 100 years ago when all

Ben Lees: Yes.

Shane: were being

Ben Lees: Mm-hmm.

Shane: absolutely, absolutely essential because like you said, they’re just stacking up bodies and they’re, they’ve been

Ben Lees: Yeah. Yeah, right.

Shane: Um

Ben Lees: also they believed in things like grave bugs and, you know, they’d find a earworm and they’d be like, “Oh, it’s a grave bug. It’s come out the grave. It’s gonna give us, you know, cholera.”[00:07:00]

Shane: This is bed bugs on steroids. You’re resting in peace and you’ve got bed bugs. Um, so

Ben Lees: they probably weren’t even related. They just… The… It’s superstition. They thought the smell and the… They thought bugs were evil. They thought they saw rats and they were like, “Oh, they’re spread-” You know? It, it’s like the anything creeping and crawling and associated with the darkness and the smell and the…

You know? They were sort of vibes-based medicine back then

Shane: Yeah. Whereas anyone who’s watched CSI knows that it takes 24 hours for the such and such fly to, and

Ben Lees: Oh, I know. That’s right. Yeah. I absolutely love, gotta love that, you know?

Shane: Okay. So, so we- we’re now probably 15 minutes into episode two, uh, which we did the, the Dodie and Di promise. Uh, so sacred… Oh, sorry, consecrated, not consecrated.

Ben Lees: Hmm.

Shane: princess. Rich dude.

Ben Lees: Oh, man. Oh, look, I’ve, I’ve mentioned the conditions, like the, the health and safety risks. [00:08:00] One of the big health and safety risks is the condition of the ground, right? So I’m gonna tell you now, this is a grim story, a really grim story. Uh, if you’ve got this far through, you’re probably okay, but, uh, you know, all fair warning because we assessed a, an exhumation, uh, site, and we thought sandy soil because we, we knew the soil was sandy in that area, free draining, you know, it’s fairly good.

The, probably the decomposition has been, I think it wasn’t a very old grave, but it was old enough that decomposition had taken place. We assessed the coffin, which was just a pine coffin. It was gonna probably have broken up. This is all very typical, no problems. We got to the site, we opened the grave, 30 family members are there, and this grave was waterlogged.

It was absolutely full of water. This area of Brookwood unexpectedly has these like clay seams that hold the water there, and this was just [00:09:00] full of water. Not only that, it was a lead-lined American casket, like this giant casket. Uh, one of the rules is that you have to bring along a casket big enough to take the old casket, right?

They did not have a casket. Th- this thing was like the size of a Cadillac, you know? It was a giant thing, um, for a tiny person, and, um, the whole thing was full of water. We had winches. We couldn’t get it out the ground. We literally couldn’t even get the winches underneath this thing. It was impossible to move it.

So we’re trying to

Shane: Okay, so you’ve gone along with the, “We’re gonna remove a, a

Ben Lees: the grave. Easy peasy. Easy peasy

Shane: that someone’s buried a

Ben Lees: This giant, yeah, like we’re calling it, it’s like an American style one. I don’t know why the Americans are so against, um, coffin decomposing, but they put, they sort of put metal all over them and line them with lead, and they really, really want this coffin to survive a long time. And, um, they, or at least they did in those days.

So, [00:10:00] uh, this is the kind of coffin that was very unpopular in the UK, but they, they’ve done it. Yeah

Shane: block of land, we’re

Ben Lees: Yeah.

Shane: it.

Ben Lees: Uh-huh. Uh-huh.

Shane: uh

Ben Lees: immediately we’re sort of suggesting, like, “Hey, you sure, you sure you wanna move this body?” You know, the idea was that it was gonna be moved to a new area, and they were gonna sort of decorate it, and it was gonna be a family area.

We sort of said to them, “This is quite a nice area for a family area. Like, it’s beautiful.” But no, we couldn’t, couldn’t convince them. We said, “Come back tomorrow because this thing is… We’re gonna need a bigger boat. You know, we’re gonna need a bigger winch here.” So they were just not having it. They, they wanted this person moved.

Um, and we brought in some extra winches. We got council, uh, contractors to come and help, and we started to raise this extremely water-logged coffin. Uh, unfortunately, as… And I was there with… I was actually training up the next student [00:11:00] EHO. Uh, we were raising this up. It started, the coffin started to break up.

So the guys at the, the, the family members at the other end rushed in and grabbed hold of the, the foot end of the… And started lifting it, but it’s full of water, so the water rushes down the other end, smashes open the, the end of this coffin, and grave juices, you know, kapow, all over the two EHOs who are standing there.

Shane: Oh

Ben Lees: Worse, the body started sliding out, and of course, before I could do, do… make a decision and, and make a direction, um, as to what to do about this, the student EHO leapt in

Shane: It’s

Ben Lees: and stopped the body with his foot. So and I’m laughing because it was the stupidest thing you could possibly have done, right? It was [00:12:00] absurd and ridiculous, and I’m just looking at the faces of 30 family members, like, draining of color, uh, you know, as the student EHO’s trying to sort of wedge this poor, poor person back in.

Shane: of the dead. Here he

Ben Lees: Oh my God,

Shane: it

Ben Lees: we, we failed. We failed. We absolutely failed. I talked about EHOs, you know, we’re very practical people, uh, but that went against us that day. So we did manage to raise this body and get it away safely, and they wrote a nice letter saying how, how good we’d been, but it, I will never, till my dying day, forget that one.

That was just everything that could have gone wrong went wrong and highlighted that-

Shane: It could have been, could have been one step worse. There could have been a photographer present. It could have been like lead

Ben Lees: I, uh, oh, it was grim. And, uh, and you know, it really highlights that sort of occupational health and safety is probably the, the biggest, like, real physical risk when you’re doing these things, [00:13:00] way more than the sort of, um, you know, the infectious disease

Shane: so getting back to the six months then, how long had it been

Ben Lees: Oh, this was several years. This was like,

Shane: Okay. So it’s just that concept of this is body s-

Ben Lees: It was super gross. Yeah.

Shane: soup,

Ben Lees: Yeah. Super gross. You have that knee-jerk, just like the Victorians, you’re like, “Okay, I can see, I can see why they wrote this legislation.” Yeah. Yeah. As, as a human and not a risk calculator, I get it. I completely get it, you know?

Shane: Oh.

Ben Lees: Oh, man

Shane: now?

Ben Lees: Oh, well, he was in the army. I can, you know, safely say that because we had several army students, but, uh, I’m sure he’s a general somewhere.

Shane: That’s, it. Oh, mate, that’s

Ben Lees: yeah. Oh, it was, it was absolutely wild. So, um, yeah, the… I- based on all of this actually, you know, I’ve, I really [00:14:00] believe in, that you’ve gotta, you’ve gotta capture the lessons, right? So I wr- actually wrote a report. I read that the Home Office were doing a review because they were planning all of this infrastructure in London, but they kept coming across graves on consecrated and non-consecrated grounds, and then they would just abandon.

When they, the Victorians closed a lot of graveyards because of this. They basically said, “No one shall ever build anything on this site ever, ever again.” Um, but then when you’re trying to build a high-speed rail line or a new block of apartments or whatever, you stumble on these graveyards, and the Home Office were trying to say, “Look, the risks,” because people were using all the same Victorian arguments, “Oh, disease, and it’s gonna, we’re gonna unleash smallpox on London, and we’re gonna…”

You know, like it’s, all those sorts of things were coming out by people who didn’t want building in their area. So I actually wrote to the, the Home Office and detailed all of this, yeah, all my experiences and what an EHO actually practically does on site, and I got called up to, to sort of, [00:15:00] um, be a witness in this parliamentary investigation into, um, you know, basically how do we handle these old graveyards that go.

So I got to, to tell all my stories, probably less colorfully than today. Um, but, uh, it was, you know.

Shane: and going, “Oh yeah, we booted that one back

Ben Lees: No, we didn’t tell that one that day, I tell you. But, it, it’s really important that they understand that when you write legislation in, in 1857, you know, it, it’s just necessarily not fit for purpose in, in, uh, you know, the 2000s.

Shane: And one of the big things I, uh, like have here with, um, writing procedures is before you even start writing the procedure, state why this procedure exists.

Ben Lees: Mmm

Shane: uh, because it then means in six months’ time, six years’ time, sixty years’ time, a hundred and twenty years’ time, you’re going, “Why do we do this?”

Ben Lees: Ja

Shane: Oh, and you go, “But that’s not relevant anymore.”

Um, and so you can go, “Okay, now let’s reassess the [00:16:00] procedure.” But, uh, then what happens is, you know, these, um, procedures come in play and you don’t wanna be the MP who says, “Oh yeah, we don’t need an EHO at a, uh, doing this thing

Ben Lees: Yeah

Shane: And you go, “Okay, bang, look at this. I’m the good guy,” to just have a month later, someone is dead because they did that wrong and blah, blah, blah.

So, there’s, uh, a fantastic book called In the Name of Safety, I think I’ve got it right, um, which talks about all these safety laws that exist and

Ben Lees: Mm.

Shane: prepared to say, “Let’s get rid of it because this law is just stupid.” Um, and so it doesn’t achieve what it’s meant to achieve. It’s a big burden.

and I just remember one of the stories is about a hundred mils on flights. Like it’s been proven to be the most ineffective safety rule out, and yet every time we jump on a flight, “Well, this is a hundred and twenty mils, you have to get rid of it.” [00:17:00] Uh, this very much is these laws are a hundred and twenty years old, um, why are we doing it? Okay, so

Ben Lees: অ

Shane: EHO now in the UK, will you still be do, you know, the graduate? Will you

Ben Lees: Yeah. Yeah, this is a, this is a legacy that’s just gonna go on forever, basically. And, um, I just wanna bring in one, one other Victorian. I love a colorful Victorian, so, um, I, I just wanted to talk about this guy, Edward Price. So, he was a Welsh doctor. He was also a druid and a nudist and a vegan, and this is the 1880s.

Shane: He was ahead of his time

Ben Lees: he was awesome. Uh, no, wait, I’m gonna pause that because you haven’t heard the second half of the story. So he has a son, um, who, uh, Dr. Price names, a traditional Welsh name, Jesus Christ.

Shane: Okay

Ben Lees: yep. Uh, unfortunately baby [00:18:00] Jesus dies after five months. Um, and because he’s a druid and he believes that bodies are going to pollute the earth, he decides he’s going to, uh, cremate his son.

So he takes the body out into a public place with a brazier and starts to burn his son’s body. But the locals spot him burning baby Jesus and rush in and save the body, and the citizens arrest this guy and he’s dragged up before the courts. And the courts in 1884 basically determined he hadn’t done anything wrong.

There’s no law against burning a body. Um, and so immediately some savvy business people say, “It’s not illegal to burn a body. We should build a crematorium.” So I know, Shane, you’re a savvy business person, so where would you build a crematorium that had a mass market and a really easy [00:19:00] way for people to bring bodies?

Shane: Just build it slap bang in the middle of London and then they can just, like, have a drive-by service. Uh

Ben Lees: Ah, even better. Government is subsidizing you to bring bodies to Brookwood, so you just build it at Brookwood, right? So the first ever crematorium,

Shane: Yeah

Ben Lees: build just near Brookwood Cemetery, and the government is actually subsidizing because this railway they built, you can just get a subsidized ticket for you and your friends and your body to go to Brookwood.

So-

Shane: really savvy, you just do it on the, just before the first stop.

Ben Lees: Yeah. It’s a bit like … Yeah.

Shane: continue in.

Ben Lees: That’s it. So they built this crematorium. They burned a horse to prove that it worked, um, but people thought that they were burning a body, so there were riots. Um, but then they did, um, uh, cremate the very first person, uh, the next year, 1885. And that is the, the perfect solution because [00:20:00] the solution they were trying to find was how do you turn a body into something which is low, you know, no public health risk, and also you can keep nearby, you can visit them.

you can keep this body on your mantelpiece if you cremate them. So this was the absolute perfect solution to the problems the Victorians were trying to solve with this giant graveyard. Um, but it’s the private industry that was providing it. So the government sort of snapped in and stopped people sending bodies down to be cremated.

But as you say, you open a crematorium in London, and then over time, uh, you know, by the ’60s, ev- most people are getting cremated, not buried. And so this cadaver crisis, which they thought was gonna be there forever, number one, thank God they, they reduced child mortality through all the sanitary measures and better food and all the rest of it, but number two, people were getting cremated, not buried.

Shane: And yeah, for us, we don’t think twice, but huge, huge cultural change. Of course, like you said, the Victorians really cared about the dead, wanted them close, [00:21:00] and then the

Ben Lees: Yeah

Shane: “Oh, wait a minute,” they’re, um, up in smoke.

Ben Lees: Yeah. It, it really, it took the First and Second World Wars. There were massive spikes after each war in the number of people getting cremated. It really changed people’s opinion of, I guess they were seeing young, young people dying overseas and being buried overseas, so the idea of having the body, um, you know, nearby, uh, through cremation was, uh, it must have changed people’s minds, you know?

Shane: Yes. Um, but also then a cultural thing because other, uh, cultures absolutely no problem. But yeah, Now we’re testing your general knowledge. Uh, so, so that’s the first one. How quickly before the second one popped up and then the third one or, you know-

Ben Lees: Oh, yeah. They, well, they did three the first year with, um, and then, like, with then, like, four the next. But, um, I think then it jumped to, like, 1,000, then 2,000, and it just snowballed basically

Shane: Yeah. Wow. Okay, so it’s suddenly just literally a boom industry [00:22:00] because you’ve

Ben Lees: Yeah

Shane: bodies coming through. nowadays we’ve got the problem that land is so expensive and, um, and so, whereas back then land was just a problem because, yeah, you’re piling them on. So, so there you go. A, a bizarre one.

Now, we better double back on the story because we’re talking about Doty and Diana, uh, and then we started talking about the waterlogged grave. We were talking about two different stories there, weren’t we?

Ben Lees: Oh yeah, that’s it. So, uh, just to finish off the Dodi and Diana story, Diana was obviously never exhumed. Dodi was exhumed, and they did have problems with news helicopters trying to get at him and things like that. Um, but yeah, just to, I guess cap off their story was that they’re both now at peace, but buried under completely different legal, um, frameworks in the UK.

So that still persists to this day

Shane: Yes. And then that one would have been fascinating because if you’re the EHO who’s there on such a big high [00:23:00] profile,

Ben Lees: Mm.

Shane: sort of thing, as opposed to one where you’ve got the man and his dog just rocking up and going, “Oh, yeah.”

Ben Lees: Yeah.

Shane: yes.

Ben Lees: Oh, they had to do it, you know, with a tent basically

Shane: Yes.

Ben Lees: Hmm.

Shane: with helicopters circling and everything and yeah. So where did he

Ben Lees: Yeah.

Shane: moved to?

Ben Lees: Uh, his family’s estate, uh, elsewhere in, uh, in England, yeah.

Shane: Yes.

Ben Lees: Yeah, they were just preparing an area for him.

Shane: Yeah. And so just, yes, temporary place and then there. Okay. So there you go. This, yeah, for anyone who’s, who’s watched this episode, listened to it, um, yeah, in the comments you can tell me which, which part was the worst part or the joke was most offensive. Um, but it is just a fascinating insight into, uh, what were risks and w- how things have changed, uh, uh, some of the weird bits of the job. Um, [00:24:00] so you’ve now moved on. You’ve come to Australia. Um, you, uh, continued to work state government, and now you came up with some beautiful software that, or proposal that went nowhere within the state government. We won’t talk about that. but you’re now out doing wonderful stuff for, um, councils.

What are you doing?

Ben Lees: Yeah, absolutely. As you say, we, um, we did a project obviously with state government to look at how EH software could fix a lot of these problems. Uh, I’m a really big believer in, as you say, moving to the future, doing the next thing, you know, do- using, um, the, the best technology outside of what we used to do.

So, um, we’ve designed some beautiful software. It’s, uh, been tested by over 1,000 EHOs now, uh, contributed to the design. Um, and, uh, yeah, now it’s being rolled out in councils. So, uh, if [00:25:00] you… This is basically is to replace your infield systems, um, to do all of your licensing regulation, deal with your stakeholders.

It does basically every aspect of environmental health work, automates, it’s AI compatible, it does all of the, the futuristic things and, and it’s, uh, hopefully coming, coming to a town near you

Shane: It even comes with an e-fork so that if you need to get that skull out, it’ll just go and do it for you. Um, okay, so, so last bit of the shameless plug, name of the product

Ben Lees: Uh, we’re Enterprise Creative Cloud, and, uh, it’s Digital Municipality is our beautiful software. Get in touch if you want a demo

Shane: Yep. So, so there you go. Absolute shameless plug at the end.

Ben Lees: Thanks, bye

Shane: yeah. But, uh, yeah, no, thank you, Ben, for, uh, for this really, really weird episode. and so yeah, environmental health, what it is and what it isn’t is, is really, really interesting. So thanks a lot, Ben. Um, I’ll catch you at

Ben Lees: Thanks, John. [00:26:00] Yes, are you there?

Shane: Okay, thanks. Bye.

Ben Lees: Bye