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Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States.
Every single American has been taught the stories of his accomplishments since elementary
school, and it’s hard to go anywhere in the US without eventually being reminded of
Ben Franklin.
In Philadelphia, there is the Ben Franklin Bridge, Franklin Institute, and statues of
his likeness all over the city.
His face is also on the one hundred dollar bill.
There was so much respect for him in the US, that saying anything negative is practically
treasonous.
But on today’s Biographics, we aren’t going to hold back on all of the details on
how Ben Franklin was and more than a bit of a mad lad.
Early Life
Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts.
His father, Josiah Franklin, came to the colonies in 1682 from Northamptonshire, and he made
candles and soap for a living.
Josiah Franklin fathered 16 children.
He had 7 with his first wife, Anne Child, in England and 9 with his second wife, Abiah
Folger, once he came to America.
As you can imagine, raising 17 children on a candle maker’s salary wasn’t easy.
Money was incredibly tight in their household.
Ben Franklin went to grammar school for just two years, before he had to leave to work
in his father’s candle business.
Ben Franklin’s parents were so poor, they sold him into indentured servitude to their
oldest son James.
In case you weren’t aware of how indentured servitude works, Ben Franklin was an unpaid
slave to his own brother until his labor repaid the debt.
James started his own printmaking business and published a newspaper called the New England
Courant.
Ben’s free room and board also counted against him, as well.
For most of his younger years, he was not allowed to earn an income.
Franklin tried to earn money by starting a side-hustle.
He used the printers to self-publishing his writing.
Then, he would stand in the middle of the streets and recite his ballads and poems out
loud, trying to sell paper copies to people who passed by.
However, he was a novice without a proper education, so this was never enough income
to support him.
Franklin tried to get married at age 19 to a woman named Deborah Read.
At the time, when a man got married, they received a dowry from the woman’s father,
which would have helped him pay off his debt.
At first, he thought they could live together with Read’s parents, but once her father
found out that Franklin was an indentured servant, he retracted his permission for the
two of them to marry.
After rejecting Ben Franklin, Deborah Read’s parents arranged a marriage for her to a man
named John Rogers.
However, it turns out that Franklin wasn’t the only one who was eying Deborah’s dowry.
Rogers lied about having a job, and he was actually unemployed.
He spent all of the money, and got them both into a massive amount of debt.
One of John Roger’s friends from England came to visit, and was shocked to see that
he had a wife, because he was already legally married back in the UK.
After being exposed, John Rogers jumped in the next boat back to England.
Obviously, this was a disaster, and Deborah Read could not get a divorce, because he wasn’t
around to sign the paperwork.
Meanwhile, Ben Franklin was enjoying his life as a bachelor.
In his autobiography, he wrote about what sounds like a sex addiction; "The hard-to-be-governed
passion of my youth had hurried me frequently into intrigues with low women that fell in
my way."
By the time Ben Franklin and Deborah Read reunited, he had gotten another woman pregnant
out of wedlock.
He showed up with a baby, who he called William.
No one knows the identity of this mystery woman, or why she abandoned their child.
Deborah Read was just happy to have Franklin back, and she agreed to help raise William.
Since Read never got a divorce, they could not legally get married.
The went on to have two more children together, and live as common law husband and wife.
Moving on Up Once Benjamin Franklin completed his sentence
of servitude, it only made sense for him to take everything he learned from his brother
James and open up his own printing businesses.
In order to accomplish that, he had to travel to England to purchase expensive printing
equipment, and sail back to Boston.
Franklin was still broke, but he was able to get an investor to help with the startup
costs.
However, once he was in London, his investor backed out, leaving him stranded.
Franklin managed to get back to the United States, but he decided to leave Boston in
favor of Philadelphia.
He began printing The Pennsylvania Gazette in 1728.
He didn’t waste any time making friends, and joined a group called The Junto Club.
Together, they established a library similar to what was already available to the public
back in England.
Even though the Junto Club was already getting this project together, Franklin would often
claim that he was the one to create the first library in the United States all by himself.
That lie has been circulated so many times, it has even found its way into history books.
Another one of the achievements that Ben Franklin is mistakenly credited for is publishing the
first Almanack in the United States.
His Poor Richard’s Almanack premiered in 1733, and it became the second most printed
book besides the Bible.
However, he actually stole this idea, and took all of the credit yet again.
The Leeds Family of New Jersey had been publishing a Farmer’s Almanack since 1689, which was
17 years before Ben Franklin was even born.
Franklin saw that their business was thriving, and he decided that he wanted to steal the
business model.
But the Leeds family was already far more established and popular than he was.
Young Franklin didn’t stand a chance...That is, until he decided to destroy the entire
family’s reputation.
Ben Franklin began a rumor that the family’s patriarch, Titan Leeds, was a satanist, and
he published a prediction that he would die in 1733.
Franklin also went on to publish more defamatory stories about the Leeds family in the Philadelphia
Gazette.
Just two years later, in 1735, a story spread that “Mother Leeds” gave birth to a hideous
demonic creature called The Jersey Devil.
This permanently ruined their reputations to the point where the family business could
not recover.
So you might be wondering, why didn’t the Leeds family sue the hell out of Ben Franklin?
Right around the same time, the US courts had decided that newspapers and print publications
should have “freedom of speech”, even if the words they printed could not be proven
to be true.
This idea is what eventually developed into The First Amendment in the US Constitution.
Journalists were put on a pedestal of having a high degree of ethics, and most people trusted
that they would do their due-diligence before printing a story.
Just a few years later, in 1737, Ben Franklin got the job as Postmaster General of Philadelphia.
The postal system in the colonies was already run by The British Crown Post.
It was common for the major newspaper publisher of each city to be in charge of the mail,
since they were already delivering papers to subscribers.
According to the historic records from the US Postal Service, Franklin could choose to
not delivery any competing newspapers.
This essentially gave him a monopoly over information being sent throughout Philadelphia.
Keep in mind that at the time, Philadelphia was the largest city, and it was also the
nation’s capital.
With this tremendous amount of power, he could make people believe anything he wanted.
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And let's get back to Franklin...
His Not-So-Original Inventions You’ve probably heard that Ben Franklin
“discovered” electricity.
As the story goes, he went outside with a key tied to a kite string during a lightning
storm.
Many modern-day historians now believe that this story was a work of fiction.
Other scientists were already experimenting with electricity years before he did.
Peter Collinson was actually the man who showed Ben Franklin a functioning electricity tube,
which sparked his interest in science.
After this point, Franklin began his own experiments with electricity.
However, keep in mind that he only had two years of elementary school education, and
was self-taught through reading books.
Unlike Peter Collinson, Franklin had no knowledge of physics.
He was so clueless, he published information that electricity was actually a “fluid”.
Despite not really knowing what he was talking about, Ben Franklin made a huge public spectacle
about “his” discovery of electricity.
He decided to demonstrate how he could stop a turkey’s heart with electric shock...
Because that’s not creepy, or anything.
Then, he wanted to cook the entire turkey with electrocution as well.
But in the midsts of trying to demonstrate this, he actually electrocuted himself and
passed out on the floor in front of a crowd of people.
Instead of realizing that Ben Franklin was inexperienced, people were still very impressed.
He earned a reputation of being a scientist.
He went on to supposedly invent several other things like the Franklin Stove, which was
actually a copy of the design of the fireplace at the Louvre in Paris.
And the College of Optometrists has serious doubts that he actually invented the bifocal
eyeglasses.
The list of examples goes on and on.
The deeper you research, the more you realized that Ben Franklin may not have invented anything,
and that all of his ideas most likely came from books and people he met.
He never filed a single patent or copyright.
In his autobiography, he claimed that he chose not to do this because he was such a great
guy, and wanted to share these brilliant ideas with the world without profiting from it.
In reality, if he filed a patent for something that wasn’t actually his, it was just asking
to be sued.
Even though he never made any money from these inventions, Benjamin Franklin was still a
successful businessman.
By the time he was in his 40’s, his employees were running the newspaper without him, and
he was able to focus on his position as the Postmaster General.
He would travel around the country for public speaking engagements with members of the British
Parliament.
When he was 51 years old, Benjamin Franklin moved to England in order to negotiate on
behalf of the colonists of Pennsylvania.
Franklin spent the next several years living in London with his son William.
He began to make friends with members of the British aristocracy.
This lead him to become apart of a group called The Hellfire Club, which was a secret society
of upper-class men who liked to discuss philosophy, politics, and the occult.
Members met at empty monasteries and churches to hold black masses and orgies.
According to records, the members wore robes similar to monks, and tried to perform magic
spells.
There were 36 separate allegations that Ben Franklin was indeed apart of The Hellfire
Club under the code name “Brother Benjamin of Cookham”.
There is also a significant amount of evidence in the form of letters written by Franklin
that proves he was very good friends with the founder, Sir Francis Dashwood.
Despite the overwhelming amount of evidence, many American historians have tried to make
up excuses for him, and deny his involvement.
Ben Franklin’s private life was even darker than we can ever imagine.
In 1998, a group was attempting to renovate his house in London, when they discovered
the bones of at least 15 people buried in his basement- John Wayne Gacy style.
Six of those bodies were young children.
There was even one baby.
The bones showed signs that they had been dissected, with their limbs chopped and drilled
to make them easier to carry down to the crawlspace.
Historians were baffled by this scene that clearly looked like the work of a serial killer.
They scrambling to find a rational explanation as to why their beloved Founding Father would
have done this.
They decided to blame it on William Hewson, who was a friend of Franklin’s.
Hewson was studying blood, and he became known as the “father of hematology”.
At the time, it was illegal for doctors to dissect cadavers, because it was considered
to be disrespectful, and it went against Christian beliefs in burial rites.
But doctors and scientists continued to do so in the name of science.
There are no documentation proving that this theory about an anatomy school is true, and
it is simply speculation.
If Hewson truly was responsible for this, it would still make Ben Franklin complicit
in grave robbing.
Some historians are quick to jump to Franklin’s defense, saying that it’s possible that
he had no idea that William Hewson had done this.
But if we learned anything from the story of John Wayne Gacy, the smell of 15 bodies
in the windowless basement would have been so overwhelming, there is no way Franklin
could miss it.
Benjamin Franklin moved back to the colonies in 1775 during the breakout of the Revolutionary
War.
His son William Franklin publicly announced his loyalty to England, and was banished from
ever returning to the colonies again.
So he continued living in London.
Even though he publically supported the Americans, it would seem that Ben and his son were actually
on the same page.
Author and historian Richard Deacon wrote a book called A History of the British Secret
Service, where he presents compelling evidence that Ben Franklin was working as a double
agent “Number 72”.
When he returned to the colonies, the Americans believed that he was giving them vital information
about England to help in the war effort.
But Deacon discovered that The British Archives actually had copies of every single transmission.
In reality, Franklin was only telling the Americans what the British wanted them to
hear.
In 1776, The American Revolutionary war was won, and the British colonies became The United
States.
The Declaration of Independence was created by a committee of five men, with Thomas Jefferson
being the main writer.
According to the Franklin Institute, Ben Franklin’s only contribution was to check for spelling
errors.
Even though he was secretly spying for England,, Franklin was happy to take some of the glory.
He made his signature on the Declaration of Independence nearly as large and obnoxious
as John Hancock’s.
Just one month later, he wanted to move back to Europe.
He left the colonies to become the new American Ambassador of France.
Partying Hard in France In 1777, Ben Franklin began his new life to
Paris.
At this point, he was a celebrity, and it was well-known that he was one of the American
Founding Fathers.
The French had helped during the American Revolution, so the excitement of the victory
was still in the air.
People were also invested in reading the stories about everyone involved.
The French Revolution was only just a few years away, in 1789.
French women thought these stories were exciting, and they imagined American men to be brave
and heroic.
Even at 71 years old, Ben Franklin had no problem impressing the ladies with his stories,
and he started living his best life.
At this point, he no longer had any filter.
He began to earn a reputation for being gluttonous, lecherous, and partying really hard.
When John Adams went to visit Franklin in Paris, he came back disgusted by how he was
wasting taxpayer dollars on his new extravagant lifestyle.
Thomas Jefferson also wrote about Franklin, ''I have marked him particularly in the company
of women where he loses all power over himself and becomes almost frenzied.”
Even though the Founding Fathers were trying to get Franklin to check himself before he
wrecked himself, he responded to all of his haters by writing this poem:
“So thô I robb'd you of a Kiss, Sweeter than their ambrosial Dew;
Why are you angry at my Bliss?
Has it at all impov'rish'd you?”
This wild lifestyle wasn’t just reserved for private parties, though.
Franklin’s next door neighbor was a wealthy businessman named Monsieur Brillon de Jouy,
and his wife, Madame Brillon, was a famous harpsichord player.
Just like many of the other French women, Madame Brillon thought that Franklin was very
impressive, and they began to have an affair.
She was in her 30’s, and she didn’t seem to mind that Franklin was in his 70’s.
For some strange reason, Franklin thought it was necessary to make Madame Brillon sign
a contract on the terms of their affair.
Apparently, Monsieur Brillon had absolutely no idea that Franklin was sleeping with his
wife, because he was invited over to dinner at their house twice a week.
There were a countless number of affairs with other women, including the widow of the famous
philosopher Helvétius, Anne-Catherine de Ligniville.
His common law wife, Deborah Read, had already passed away.
So, he proposed to Madame Helvétius.
She declined, claiming that she was still in love with her late husband, and she felt
that it would be disrespectful to his memory.
Unfortunately, though, Ben Franklin probably didn’t restrain himself until after Debrah’s
death to have affairs.
When he was 39 years old, he wrote a letter to a young man who wanted advice on how to
deal with a sex addiction.
Franklin recommended that he should start having secret affairs with older women, because
they were more experienced, discrete, and willing to treat younger men very well.
He also mentions that after menopause, “there is no hazard of children”.
When you go through all of the very specific details he gives in that letter, it’s obvious
that Franklin was speaking from experience.
After the other Founding Fathers saw his true colors, word began to spread that Franklin
was actually a lecherous old man.
Most people felt that this was acceptable, considering all of his other accomplishments.
And, of course, he came up with excuses for his poor behavior.
In one of his essays, he wrote that he developed a method of trying to see if it was possible
for a human being to actually achieve perfection.
His list of 13 virtues were as follows: Temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry,
sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, and chastity.
Franklin claims that he would make attempts to improve his personality, only to realize
that the harder he tried to be good at one thing, he would begin to lack in other aspects
of his life.
He concluded that it’s not possible for someone to ever be “perfect”.
So...if you can’t be perfect, why even try to become a good person, right?
Death, and Legacy For the rest of Benjamin Franklin’s life,
he continued to indulge in whatever he wanted.
He eventually contracted a painful condition known as the gout, which usually only happens
from drinking too much alcohol and eating the wrong things.
During his recovery, he wrote a fake conversation with his disease.
Through this, we find out that in his later years, the only exercise he got in a day was
the walk from his carriage to restaurant, and back again.
The rest of his time was spent lounging around drinking tea, eating, reading books, and spending
time with the ladies.
Benjamin Franklin died at the ripe old age of 84.
Contrary to popular belief, he did not have syphilis, which is a miracle, considering
that he slept with nearly everything that moved.
He had pleurisy when he died, which is a disease of the lung.
For years after his death, the only evidence that people cared about Ben Franklin’s legacy
came from his self-published autobiography.
They believed everything he said, and took his word as gospel.
The hero worship of Benjamin Franklin is now ingrained in American history.
People want to believe that this genius polymath was one of the masterminds behind the founding
of the nation, and Americans became proud to have him represent their country.
Whether you love him or hate him, there is no denying that he made an impact.
Today, there are statues, museums, libraries, schools, and entire towns named after Benjamin
Franklin in the United States.
If he were alive to see all of this today, he would probably smile, because just like
everything else in his life, he got exactly what he wanted.