Will the real Benjamin Franklin please stand up?

We have been watching a television show called Sleepy Hollow.  C15 and I both love the show and watch it every Monday night at 9 without fail.  This is a show rich in history and historical events but I was finding that they were making a few reference about Benjamin Franklin, in particular, that I had never heard before and since I love to learn new things and have fairly good research skills, I thought I would check a few things out.

Franklin invented many, many amazing inventions in his lifetime.

He taught himself to read Spanish, French, Latin, Italian, and English.
That is quite an amazing feat considering he only had two years of formal schooling by the time he was just 10 years old.
He was self-taught in everything he learned.

I think that most people have at least heard of Ben Franklin.

Ben playing the glass armonica.

He is associated with all kinds of things from bifocals to the creation of the glass armonica.

Franklin usually conjures an image of a wild-haired man flying a kite in a lightening storm, a man who wrote most of and signed The Declaration of Independence, and the face of our $100 bill (my personal favorite image of Ben, never have enough of these) but a few of the lesser known facts I found were a little disturbing at best.

Here is a little of what I found on the hunt for the truth about Ben Franklin.
*It is alleged that he owned slaves.

*He liked to walk around naked.

*He was rumored to be a player and never legally married.  He did, however, have a common law wife, Deborah Read.

*He had as many as 12 illegitimate children with a variety of different woman.  Illegitimate simply means that a woman has a child with someone that is not her husband (and hopefully not the husband of someone else either).  The parents are not legally married.  He was a pretty busy guy to have 12 illegitimate kids!  He is known as a Founding Father but this is a little extreme.

*It is alleged that he was an alcoholic and a drug addict.

*He was also said to be part of the Hellfire Club which was basically a club for people who wanted to take part in immoral acts, very immoral acts. (Occult?)  They actually talked about this exact topic on tonight's show (11/3/2014).  Sounds like a fairly creepy secret society of sorts.  I have links at the end of this post.

*The final juicy tidbit that I came across is that Ben may have been a serial killer, what?  In 1998 while renovating Ben Franklin's old home at 36 Craven Street, ten bodies (4 adults/6 children) were discovered under the house where Franklin lived in London.  These bodies can be dated back to the exact time that Franklin lived in the house.  One theory suggests that these bodies were being used in medical experiments as the bodies were sawed apart and the skulls had holes drilled in them.  In those days performing autopsies and/or experiments on corpses was considered illegal and jail time was the punishment.

Like most things in history, we will probably never have all the answers to our questions and new discoveries are made every day which may contradict what we have learned before.  I think that is why I like researching these types of things.  I am very surprised I found so much negativity associated with Benjamin Franklin.
The Hellfire Club
The History Channel Hellfire Club
Ben Franklin
PBS
Timeline of BF's life
Of course, Pinterest