 According to Marlin's research, the story was likely concocted by British and Belgian propagandists in London and then spread far and wide beginning on April 17, 1917 by the "Times" and the "Daily Mail", newspapers owned by Lord Northcliffe, a man with close connections to British propaganda.The Northcliffe papers gave the story credibility by combining a mistranslated report from a German newspaper about dead horses being boiled down for glue, with an invented story, ostensibly from Belgian newspapers, quoting a detailed, eyewitness description of dead German soldiers being dumped into a huge cauldron at a "Corpse Exploitation Establishment.