The age-old mystery has at last been solved: Benjamin Franklin was Jack the Ripper.

Oh, sorry; just got a little overexcited by Wednesday night’s episode of the PBS series “Secrets of the Dead.” Turns out that Ben and Jack lived in different centuries. But still; how much do we really know about Ben Franklin?

The episode, “Ben Franklin’s Bones,” delves into a curious historical nugget: In the late 1990s construction workers renovating a building in London where Franklin once lived discovered human bones in the basement. Ben Franklin, serial killer? Ben Franklin, crematory operator?

The truth turns out to be not quite so surprising and to involve Franklin only tangentially, but it’s still ghoulishly fascinating. The story, which centers on William Hewson, a surgeon and a Franklin acquaintance who also lived in the building, has been told before, but it is particularly well rendered here.

We get a thorough grounding in anatomical studies in the 18th century, and in the related field of grave robbing, corpses being in demand for research purposes. We even receive a crash course in how specifically “resurrectionists” (as grave robbers were called) would tackle a grave to get the body out in the shortest amount of time and thus reduce the chances of being caught. A deplorable line of work, you say? Have some sympathy for the poor resurrectionist!