If you live somewhere, does that make it yours? I guess you could say, “my town” or “my country” without owning it. But, if you are a foreigner, say in Paramus, New Jersey (where the end of the world happens, according to Ghostbusters), San Dimas, California (where Bill and Ted had their excellent Adventure), or Cluj-Napoca (where the greatest king of Hungary was born, and where Romania’s great Black Sea Bubble started), then you might hesitate to say, “my.”
Yes, there are people who feel affinity to somewhere without being a citizen. But, when I say, “in my country,” people do not expect me to say a place where I lived for a few years as a boarder. Hey, I spent some time in Bulgaria, is that “my country?”
Now, some people say that bones were found, “in the basement of Benjamin Franklin’s house.” This implies that Franklin had something to do with those bones. However, Franklin was a boarder in that house. That means, he had a housesit there. Like a student might rent a “bed sit” in modern Britain.
The house is now called the Ben Franklin house to capitalise on tourism. Just like the house where Matthais Corvin, the great King of Hungary, was born, is marketed as the Matthais house. But, just as the baby Matthais had no idea what was going on in that quiet little house in Cluj-Napoca, so Ben Franklin likely didn’t know what was happening beneath his feet in London.
But he was “a curious man” you say? (Or the Smithsonian says.) The Smithsonian claims that the “curious man that he was,” Franklin probably knew what was going on and would, “sneak down and check out the proceedings at least once or twice.”
Franklin’s curiosity did not, in other areas, include spying on private affairs. There seems to have been an illegal anatomy workshop underneath him. Franklin might have thought something else was happening there, perhaps something of an intimate matter that he didn’t want to see. Or, perhaps something political that he didn’t want to know about. It might have been an illegal gambling den for all he knew. And, I would bet that he didn’t want to know.
Franklin’s curiosity usually extended only to things he could write about. As Franklin once wrote, “three can keep a secret if two of them are dead.” He loved reading books and talking to people. But spying and keeping secrets was not his thing.
Now, the Smithsonian goes on to defend the other occupant of the house who the skeletons might have belonged to. William Hewson is said to have run an illegal anatomy school while Ben Franklin was a lodger, boarder, bed-sitter at the house.
Sure, Ben Franklin stayed there. But calling it “his house” is misleading. It assumes that he had control of what happened in the basement, and access to it. In reality, it wasn’t his, he merely rented a small part of it. If I eat at a restaurant, that doesn’t make me the chef.
That doesn’t mean it’s not a nice place to visit. The idea that you could be in proximity to where a great mind once contemplated things is great. However, don’t blame Franklin for what he had no control over, and probably didn’t know.