Replevying a Corpse

As a hardened reader of sensationally horrible deaths in the Victorian press, you would think that very little would shock. Yet there is a category of mortuary stories that recently has given me pause. I refer, of course, to stories involving writs of replevin on corpses.

What?

Here is the basic legal definition.

Replevin is an action or a writ issued to recover an item of personal property wrongfully taken. Replevin, sometimes known as “claim and delivery”, is an antiquated legal remedy in which a court requires a defendant to return specific goods to the plaintiff at the beginning of the action. The advantage of a writ (order) of replevin is that it deprives the defendant of the use of the property while the case is awaiting trial, therefore increasing the likelihood of a quick settlement.

But what does this have to do with corpses?

REPLEVYING A CORPSE

A Dead Woman’s Body Held for a Board Bill.

Trouble Between Foster Geggs and Mrs. Frost, His Landlady.

A Difference of Fifty Dollars Provokes a Strange Suit.

Difficulties Experienced by a Constable in Serving a Writ.

‘Squire Sanderson issued a writ of replevin yesterday for the remains of the wife of Foster Geggs, a merchant of New Lexington, Ohio. They were detained by a Mrs. Frost, a keeper of a boarding-house at No. 322 Walnut street. Constable Frank Dossman served the papers, and, after a great deal of trouble, the body was secured.

Five weeks ago a gentleman and lady arrived in this city from New Lexington, Highland County, Ohio. They were Mr. and Mrs. Foster Geggs. They applied to Mrs. Frost for board and lodging, and were accommodated. The lady appeared to be in bad health, and

THEIR MISSION TO THIS CITY

was the search of medical aid for Mrs. Geggs, who was suffering from a complication of diseases. She appeared to regain her health for a time, but a week ago she had a relapse. Early yesterday morning her sufferings were released by death. When daylight had arrived Geggs sent for Estep & Meyer, the undertakers. They embalmed the body, and, incased in a handsome coffin, it was ready to be shipped to New Lexington for burial. Shortly after noon the undertakers’ wagon arrived to take the remains to the depot, but Mrs. Frost refused to allow them to be removed. She claimed that Geggs owed her $50 for board and lodging.

HE ACKNOWLEDGED THE INDEBTEDNESS,

but not to the amount she claimed. He offered to settle for $25. This offer the woman spurned. He pleaded with her to allow the undertakers to remove the body of his dead wife, but she shook her head and said no. She wanted her money, and was going to have it, if she had to hold the body for a week. Several of the boarders tried to persuade her to release the remains, but it was of no used. Finally, Geggs threatened to swear out a writ of replevin. Mrs. Frost laughed at the idea, and dared any Constable to enter her house. Seeing no other way to secure the body of his wife, he appeared before ‘Squire Sanderson and swore out

THE WRIT OF REPLEVIN.

The ‘Squire detailed Constable Dossman to serve the papers. When he arrived he found the door of the house locked and barred. He rang and knocked for admittance, but Mrs. Frost refused to admit him. He next tried the windows, but could not in any way gain an entrance. The alley way was the only resort, and on this side the Frost woman did not look for the Constable to enter. After scaling a high fence he found open the rear door. Having gained admittance, he found the corpse in the parlor. The writ was served on Mrs. Frost, and she reluctantly opened up the front door and

THE COFFIN WAS REMOVED

to the undertaker’s wagon, which was still in waiting. The remains were driven to the Grand Central Depot, from whence they were taken to New Lexington last night. The writ also called for several valise and trunks, which were also secured. The interesting and sensational suit will be heard Monday December 27, by “Squire Sanderson.

This is the second instance in this city where a corpse was secured only on a writ of replevin.

ANOTHER CASE

About two years ago the wife of Johnnie Ryan, the Fifth-street concert hall man, swore out a writ for the body of her baby that was buried in St. Joseph’s Cemetery on the Warsaw pike. Mrs. Ryan wanted the remains removed to another cemetery, but the Superintendent refused to give up the body, claiming that she owned for the burial lot, and the digging of the grave. She appeared before “Squire Sanderson and swore out the writ. Constable Frank Johnson, with a squad of Special Constables, served the papers. A number of spades were secured and the body of the child was resurrected. The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 17 December 1886: p. 4

Popular thought held that a body was not property and could not be stolen.

The common law recognizes no property in anybody in the dead, though it does recognize the property in the shroud and other apparel of the dead as belonging to the person who was at the expense of the funeral. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 17 April 1880: p. 8

and

But whatever may have been the rule in England under the Ecclesiastical law, and while it may be true still that a dead body is not property in a commercial sense of that term, yet in this country it is, so far as we know, universally held that those who are entitled to the possession and custody of it for purposes of decent burial have certain legal rights to and in it which the law will protect. Indeed the mere fact that a person has exclusive rights over a body for the purposes of burial, necessarily leads to the conclusion that it is property in the broadest sense of the term, viz., something over which the law accords him exclusive control. (Larsen v. Chase, 50 N. W. 238, cited in “Property in Dead Bodies,” Walter F. Kuzenski, Marquette Law Review, Issue 1, Vol. 9, December 1924)

However, in real life, bodies were often held for ransom. The threat of either retaining a corpse, of publicly displaying it, or of burying it in a pauper’s grave was used in all kinds of circumstances to extort money, legally owed or not. A decent burial was a serious business; even the poorest would go to great lengths to have the trappings of a “proper” funeral, rather than a pauper’s rites, with burial in the Potter’s Field.

Some hospitals apparently had VIP undertakers on the early 20th-century equivalent of speed-dial. I assume the undertakers paid handsomely for their priority status.

ON REPLEVIN WRIT

John Lund Secures Possession of Wife’s Corpse.

Undertaker Holds Body of Woman Who Died at Hospital and Refuses Possession.

After he had been forced to take out a writ of replevin to secure the corpse of his wife, who died yesterday morning at U.B.A. hospital, John Lund, an Englishman, was permitted to proceed with the arrangements for the funeral. Mrs. Lund died yesterday morning and, in accordance with a custom common in the hospitals, a nurse immediately notified Edward J. Corkery, an undertaker at 524 South Division Street. Corkery called for the body.

Soon afterward Metcalf & Co., who had been notified by the husband, went for the body and were referred to Corkery, who refused to give it up unless paid for his trouble. Lund went to the prosecutor for a warrant for kidnaping, but the prosecutor advised him to take out the replevin papers, and made them out himself. The body was taken by a constable late last night on the writ and removed to Metcalf’s establishment.

The funeral will be held from the residence of Andrew Olesen, 264 Ann street, Saturday afternoon at 2:30. Grand Rapids [MI] Press 5 September 1907: p. 8

It is a nice point whether a dead person can be kidnapped, but the prosecutor obviously made the right call.

With this next case, we meet Mr. John B. Habig, a well-known Cincinnati character and keeper of the Cincinnati public morgue for 20 years, in a highly discreditable incident.

AN EXTRAORDINARY REPLEVIN

An Attempted Case of Extortion

The body of the aged gentleman who fell dead in front of No. 88 Twelfth street, on Thursday morning, as reported in the Gazette of yesterday, was identified yesterday by his son as that of William Hall, as was surmised. The young man, William C. Hall, an engineer on the I.C. & L Railroad, came to the city yesterday and after identifying the body at Mr. John B. Habig’s undertaking establishment, No. 183 West Sixth street, ordered it removed to Soards, a few doors east for shipment and interment, at the same time offering Habig $10, as payment for keeping the corpse. But Habig was not that kind of man; he wanted more than $10 for keeping the body a day and a half, and demanded $40. The young man refused, claiming that the demand was extortionate, and was told that he must pay it, or he could not have the corpse. This was late last night, but Mr. Hall posted off to ‘Squire True, who, fortunately, was in his office trying the case of the Hamiltonian horse-killers, and who at once gave Mr. Hall the requisite magisterial assistance. Constable Green was armed with a writ of replevin and at once started off after the body. Shortly before midnight the strong arm of the law grasped the corpse and transferred it to Soards’ establishment, from whence it will be shipped to Mt. Carmel to-morrow morning. If Mr. Habig wishes to rid himself of the richly deserved odium which much attach to the act, he must rise and give a satisfactory explanation of his exorbitant demand.

In years gone by the deceased kept a well-known livery stable on Sycamore street below Fourth. Cincinnati [OH] Daily Gazette 8 August 1874: p. 4

The Cincinnati Enquirer also reported on the case, adding the detail that “The daughter of the deceased remarked that she did not wish Habig to bury the body because he had sent a drunken attendant with her when she went to view it.” The newspaper added, “Mr. Habig has added to his reputation, but not to his stock of money, or we have been sadly misinformed.” Yet when he died, the Enquirer wrote favorably of him, stating in his obituary: “On down the pages of crime’s annals in this vicinity the name of Habig is so closely linked with these crimes and tragedies that it is a question if there lived in Cincinnati during that period a man whose name was more familiar to the public eye.” [Cincinnati (OH) Enquirer, 4 May 1898: p. 8] He was described as a big, fat, jolly man, always ready for fun. De mortuis, one assumes. Plus he left three sons to carry on the undertaking business, who would be more inclined to advertise if the Enquirer didn’t rake up the past.

Freight and railway companies often found shipping the dead a very profitable line.

Replevying a Corpse

A poor widow had the dead body of her husband brought by rail from Dover to Leamington, without first inquiring the cost. The railway company charged at the rate of 1s a mile, making £8, and as the widow could not pay this sum they detained the corpse for two days until the money was raised. Evening Post, 14 May 1892: p. 1

HOLDING CORPSE FOR THE EXPRESS

The agent of the Adams Express Co. at Shamokin held the corpse of Henry Fretz, awaiting the payment of charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. It was finally settled by the government.

Fretz was from Pitman, Northumberland county, and an apprentice in the United States Navy. February 14 he was drowned in the San Francisco Bay and government officials notified his parents that they would bury the body there or bear the expense of having it shipped home.

The parents requested the body to be shipped and it arrived in Shamokin Wednesday evening, accompanied by a bill for charges amounting to over a hundred dollars. Being unable to pay the claim, the agent refused to turn the corpse over to the grief-stricken parents and it was held in the Shamokin office, where it remained until the tangle was straightened out by the government assuming the charges. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 27 February 1909: p. 9

Sometimes the writ was for a partial corpse.

Recently a man had his leg amputated in a Washington hospital, and, upon visiting the capital some months afterwards, discovered the member preserved in alcohol. He was shocked, and demanded it, that he might bury it. The demand was refused, but, upon bringing suit in replevin, the case was decided in his favour, and he was given possession of his own leg. The Arizona Sentinel [Yuma, AZ] 28 February 1885: p. 2

Here we find dueling replevins: for corpse and for shroud.

POLICE WILL GUARD FUNERAL SERVICES

Undertaker Threatens to Take the Clothes Off of a Corpse During Row With a Rival, So Precaution Is Taken

Funeral services for Charles Klytta, 60 years old, will be held under police protection this afternoon from his late residence, 5438 South Laflin street, because B. Trundell, an undertaker at 1702 West Forty-Eight street, threatens to interrupt the ceremonies with a writ of replevin and remove from the body a suit of clothes which he says he paid for.

This threat grows out of a dispute between two undertakers soon after Klytta fell heir to $1,000 several weeks ago. Klytta was employed by Trundell, but he was a close friend of Joseph Patka, 1750 West Forty-Eighth street, a business rival of Trundell’s.

When Klytta received the $1,000 he left his wife and eight children and went to live with Nicholas Jasnoch, 4858 Winchester avenue. Then he began to spend his small fortune in having a good time. He became ill and was told he had not long to live.

Immediately both undertakers asked Klytta if he couldn’t throw the “business” their way. Klytta was in a dilemma. He liked Patka as a friend, but also thought he should respect the wishes of his former employer. Finally a Bohemian lodge of which he was a member was asked to settle the question. A committee waited on Klytta’s death bed and argued the matter, with the result that Patka was chosen.

Scarcely had Klytta breathed his last, however, when Trundell drove up and carried off the body. Mrs. Klytta pleaded in vain for the return of the body. Then she engaged Attorney D. Carmichael, and he tried to get the body. Yesterday the lawyer obtained a writ of replevin from the Municipal court and, accompanied by a bailiff and a policeman, went to Trundell’s establishment. The body was laid out in state in the parlor, clad in a new suit of clothes.

The writ did not provide for taking the clothing with the body and an argument ensued. Finally Patka took the body and new suit and carried them off to his undertaking shop. Therefore Trundell threatens to obtain a writ of replevin for the clothing and to get it today when the services are held at the Klytta residence. The Inter Ocean [Chicago, IL] 8 November 1912: p. 1

Undertakers more usually replevined their own property, such as coffins or candle-holders.

Bill Is Not Paid:

Takes Coffin Back

Detroit, Oct. 9 Because his bill for $300 had not been paid, Stanley Lappo, an undertaker, flanked by two constables, entered the home of Mrs. Vincent Dziegiuski. After retrieving the woman’s body from its casket, he loaded the latter, with candles, pedestals and display palms, into his wagon and drove off. The undertaker later explained the woman’s husband had agreed to pay the account before the funeral took place. When he failed to do so, Lappo obtained a writ of replevin and took possession of his property.

The husband later effected an arrangement with another undertaker, and the funeral was held a few hours later. Duluth [MN] News-Tribune 10 October 1921: p. 6

Sometimes the quarrels leading to a writ were not about money, but about something more visceral. This is an excerpt from the story of Mrs. Terrica Beck, an elderly Catholic woman badly treated by her daughter and son-in-law. I have not found a resolution to the case.

Throughout her last illness she desired to be buried in the Catholic cemetery. This was her last request. She died in her sister’s house. The expenses of her last sickness were borne by her sister. The coffin and shroud were purchased, and the last sad offices performed by her sister.

Scarcely had her last breath expired, when her son-in-law, before careless of her welfare, appeared and laid claim to her clothing and body. More desirous of the property, he departed expressing his willingness that Mrs. Beck’s dying wishes as to her interment should be complied with….In accordance with the wishes of the deceased, her body was placed in the vault of the Catholic cemetery, whence it was removed by a suit of replevin sued out by her son-in-law. He had obtained a coffin and shroud from the city, and had a grave dug at the expense of the city in the Potter’s Field. He was willing to pay the expense of a law suit, to defeat the dying wish of his wife’s mother, but not to pay for giving her more than a pauper’s funeral. Plain Dealer [Cleveland, OH] 28 April 1870: p. 3

One can only imagine the family dynamic that would lead to the following situation:

Refused to give up Body

Anderson, Ind., Jan. 4

Mrs. Joseph Speece was compelled to replevin the body of her husband so that it could be buried. He died Wednesday at the home of his wife’s father, John Nelson, and when she prepared for the funeral Nelson refused to give up the body until a large board bill had been paid. When a writ was served the body was delivered. The widow also sues Nelson for $100 for the detention of the body. Wilkes-Barre [PA] Times 4 January 1901: p. 1

One last oddity: Although judges in several jurisdictions ruled in the early 1900s that corpses had no commercial value (were not property) and thus could not be replevined, that judgement did not stand all over the country. In a 1906 case where there was a wrangle about the funeral expenses exceeding what the family wanted to pay, the family obtained a writ of replevin to get the body back from the overcharging undertaker. “As some value had to be given the writ it read ‘one corpse to the value of $50.’” The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 30 September 1906: p. 12

There are many dismal stories of first/second wives, mistresses, and hostile family members battling over loved one’s corpses, but they don’t always go as far as replevining. Other stories of legal proceedings over corpses? Swear out a writ to Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

Thanks to Michael Robinson for the details of corpse property law.

Undine, of Strange Company, sent this great story of a legal fight over an embalmed body.

She also added a bonus tale of a dead-beat dad: A (somewhat) related story was about a man whose wife died, and he afterwards stiffed the undertaker on the bill. (“Stiffed,” get it? Oh, never mind) When, a while later, his daughter also passed away, this undertaker refused to take the job. In fact, he spread the word through the “Undertaker’s Association” that the man was a, well, deadbeat, so all his colleagues refused the man’s business as well. (As a side note, the bereaved man tried to get a free coffin from a local charity. When they realized he wasn’t indigent–just an incredible skinflint–they indignantly refused.) I don’t recall exactly how the story ended, except that he finally managed to get his daughter buried using a blanket instead of a coffin!

Thanks, Undine!

For more stories of Victorian death and mourning see my book, The Victorian Book of the Dead, also available for Kindle. Or ask your library/bookstore to order it. You’ll find more details about the book here and indexes here.

Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com.

The Tooth Snatcher

Since we are nothing if not topical here, I excuse this slight supernatural story involving tooth-snatching on the grounds of enfeeblement from a recent root canal. Ouch.

“The Rev. Mr. Perring, Vicar of a parish which is now a component part of London, though, about forty-five years ago it had the appearance of a village at the outskirts, had to encounter the sad affliction of losing his eldest Son at an age when parents are encouraged to believe their children are to become their survivors; the youth dying in his seventeenth year. He was buried in the vaults of the church.

“Two nights subsequently to that interment, the father dreamed that he saw his Son habited in a shroud spotted with blood, the expression of his countenance being that of a person enduring some paroxysm of acute pain: ‘Father, father! come and defend me!’ were the words he distinctly heard, as he gazed on this awe-inspiring apparition; ‘they will not let me rest quiet in my coffin.’

“The venerable man awoke with terror and trembling; but after a brief interval of painful reflection concluded himself to be labouring under the influence of his sad day-thoughts, and the depression of past sufferings; and with these rational assurances commended himself to the All-Merciful, and slumbered again and slept.

“He saw his Son again beseeching him to protect his remains from outrage, ‘For,’ said the apparently surviving dead one, ‘they are mangling my body at this moment.’ The unhappy Father rose at once, being now unable to banish the fearful image from his mind, and determined when day should dawn to satisfy himself of the delusiveness or verity of the revelation conveyed through this seeming voice from the grave.

“At an early hour, accordingly, he repaired to the Clerk’s house, where the keys of the church and of the vaults were kept. The Clerk after considerable delay, came down-stairs, saying it was very unfortunate he should want them just on that very day, as his son over the way had taken them to the smith’s for repair,—one of the largest of the bunch of keys having been broken off short in the main door of the vault, so as to render it impracticable for anybody to enter till the lock had been picked and taken off.

“Impelled by the worst misgivings, the Vicar loudly insisted on the Clerk’s accompanying him to the blacksmith’s—not for a key but for a crowbar, it being his resolute determination to enter the vault and see his Son’s coffin without a moment’s delay.

“The recollections of the dream were now becoming more and more vivid, and the scrutiny about to be made assumed a solemnity mingled with awe, which the agitation of the father rendered terrible to the agents in this forcible interruption into the resting-place of the dead. But the hinges were speedily wrenched asunder—the bar and bolts were beaten in and bent beneath the heavy hammer of the smith,—and at length with tottering and outstretched hands, the maddened parent stumbled and fell: his son’s coffin had been lifted from the recess at the vault’s side and deposited on the brick floor; the lid, released from every screw, lay loose at top, and the body, enveloped in its shroud, on which were several dark spots below the chin, lay exposed to view; the head had been raised, the broad riband had been removed from under the jaw, which now hung down with the most ghastly horror of expression, as if to tell with more terrific certainty the truth of the preceding night’s vision. Every tooth in the head had been drawn.

“The young man had when living a beautiful set of sound teeth. The Clerk’s Son, who was a barber, cupper, and dentist, had possessed himself of the keys, and eventually of the teeth, for the purpose of profitable employment of so excellent a set in his line of business. The feelings of the Rev. Mr. Perring can be easily conceived. The event affected his mind through the remaining term of his existence; but what became of the delinquent whose sacrilegious hand had thus rifled the tomb was never afterwards correctly ascertained. He decamped the same day, and was supposed to have enlisted as a soldier. The Clerk was ignominiously displaced, and did not long survive the transaction. Some years afterwards, his house was pulled down to afford room for extensive improvements and new buildings in the village.

“As regards the occurrence itself, few persons were apprised of it; as the Vicar—shunning public talk and excitement on the subject of any member of his family—exerted himself in concealing the circumstances as much as possible. The above facts, however, may be strictly relied on as accurate.”

Glimpses of the Supernatural, Frederick George Lee, 1875

Editor’s note: A friend who provided the above example writes to the Editor:—”I knew the family, and the circumstance of Mr. Perring’s singular dream; and can certainly testify to its truth.”

A minor point, but while this was published in Spiritualist journals and Lee’s book, in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the language suggests eighteenth century.

While the body-snatchers’ primary goal was corpses for the anatomist market, teeth were also prized merchandise. Dentures were frequently made from post-mortem pearly-whites, also known today as “Waterloo teeth,” after the wholesale tooth-snatching that occurred after that battle. This article tells the history of the practice, which did not begin with Waterloo, and suggests that many people did not realize the source of their false teeth.

Ben Crouch, described in the following squib, was said to be the leader of “the most expert gang of resurrectionists ever known.” He specialized in corpse teeth, and even got the proper credentials to facilitate his dental acquisitions.

[Crouch] was a big, powerful man, quite famous as a prize-fighter. His father was employed as a carpenter at Guy’s Hospital, which probably explains the way in which he first became attracted to resurrectioning… In 1817 he and Jack Harnett, another of the gang, gave up resurrectioning and began the business of supplying dentists with human teeth. They got sutlers’ licenses and followed the English army to France and Spain. After a battle they would get as many teeth as possible from the dead, likewise stealing any money or valuables that might be found on the corpses. The Medical News, Vol. 81, 1902

Other toothsome Spiritualist tales? Send with a warm salt-water rinse to chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

In other supernatural teeth news, I posted previously on a woman bitten by a demon after some table-tipping experiments, also on The Phantom Teeth of Knightsbridge, and occult dentistry.

Corpse Collectors

A famous corpse collector: Juana la Loca, pictured in 1877 by Francisco Pradilla. Joanna of Castile was said to have carried with her the embalmed body of her husband, Philip. She would have the coffin opened so she could kiss the body and see if he had yet come back to life. Her refusal to have Philip’s corpse buried was one of the factors in her brother having her declared mad and incompetent to rule.

Perhaps I was a curator at the Body World exhibition in a previous life, but one of the categories of stories that fascinates me is that of people who cannot let the bodies of the dead be decently buried. These enthusiasts are discovered keeping corpses— mummified, skeletonized, liquefied, or shrink-wrapped—in freezer, sitting room, bed, or garden. There are, of course, a variety of rationales for this behavior: mental illness, denial, a belief that the dead will be resurrected, social security checks to be cashed, or a crime to cover up. One woman, whose husband’s body lay in their house for nine months after his death said that he had told her that he wanted his corpse to be eaten by birds. There was no word about whether she had left the bedroom window open to facilitate this wish.

This corpus is by no means complete: I’ve omitted the distasteful story of Karl Tanzler/Count Carl von Cosel, and tales of those spouses embalmed and kept in the drawing room due to some mythic clause in the will about enjoying property as long as the dead spouse “remains above ground.” I’ve left out religious rituals like this Indonesia festival and the story of Hannah Beswick, “the mummy of Birchen Bower,” whose mummification and storage in a clock case was dictated by her fear of being buried alive.

The motives of the corpse collectors in this post are more obscure; perhaps due to what is now defined as “complicated grief,” where the bereaved are incapacitated by sorrow and cannot move forward.

In our first case, a heartbroken father took extreme measures to keep his dead children with him.

A FATHER’S VOW

He Declares That His Dead Children Shall Never Leave Him

He Has Their Bodies Embalmed, and the Casket Placed in a Room Where He Keeps Them for Twenty Years.

[Philadelphia Press]

A funeral took place in Palmyra, N.J., on Tuesday last, which furnishes the sequel to one of the most remarkable cases ever known. The bodies of three embalmed children, which had been preserved by an eccentric father for twenty years, were interred in one grave, the father having died three months before, and the remaining members of the family being unwilling to perpetuate his singular ideas, in violation of common custom.

In 1859 Henry Coy lived in a comfortable old-fashioned dwelling, on the northeast corner of Front and Cooper streets, Camden. His family then consisted of himself, a wife and two children—one a girl of five years and the other a curly-haired, handsome boy of two. Mr. Coy was a surgical instrument maker, engaged in business in this city, on Eighth street, near Walnut, and afterward in the neighborhood of Second and Dock streets. He was regarded as a skillful man at his trade, and was said to be worth money, but his reticent disposition and disinclination to mix in society prevented any specific inquiry as to his exact financial standing. People who knew him in a business way, however, were content to spread the rumor that he was a man of no inconsiderable wealth. His entire time out of business hours was spent with his family, to whom he appeared devotedly attached.

THE FATHER’S STRANGE CONDUCT

Soon after the war began, Mrs. Coy died, after giving birth to another child—a girl. She was buried, and after that the father seemed more than ever in love with his children. The little daughter was rather a delicate child, and in 1862 she was taken ill and died after a few weeks’ sickness. Unceasing attendance at the little one’s bedside, and the constant loss of sleep, seems to have strangely affected the fathers mind. He would not permit any of the neighbors to touch or even look at the dead body, and declared that it should never leave his sight while he lived. And the eccentric man then went to work to accomplish that purpose. With the assistance of a mysterious stranger the little corpse was subjected to an embalming process and then incased in an air-tight casket and carefully deposited in one of the upper chambers of the dwelling. Old-time residents of Camden remember well that it was a popular superstition that the spirit of the child used to regularly appear at the windows in a supplicating attitude, and the house was said to be haunted. All attempts to see the mummified corpse or to learn the truth of the queer story were fruitless, and in a few months there were not many persons who gave it credence. Some time between the latter part of 1863 and the summer of 1864 observing people noticed that the baby had disappeared, and the previous appearance of a physician’s chaise at the door a dozen times during the week led to the believe that the infant had died and had been embalmed, as the first one had been. The doctor was a strange one, and nothing could be gleaned from him. Just when the boy died is not known, but it is supposed that he followed not long after the second death, and was also put in a casket and laid alongside his brother and sister.

MOVING THE BODIES

In 1866 the story of the mysterious embalming was renewed, and for some unexplained reason it was whispered about the upper part of Camden that Mr. Coy was a Mormon; that he had a dozen or more wives concealed in the house, and that every night prayers were said over the bodies of the dead children. There appeared no just foundation for these stories, for the father was rarely seen on the street, and during his brief absence form home the dreary-looking old house seemed entirely deserted. The upper stories were never opened, and cobwebs collected over the windows and under the eaves. The man became such a thorough mystery that all efforts to ferret out his secret were abandoned, and the gossips were obliged to build their startling stories of ghosts and uncanny noises by night purely from imagination. Mr. Coy left Camden for a time, and, it was popularly supposed, took the bodies of his children along with him; but nothing definite was known of his movements nor of the truth of the rumor, until five or six years later, when he moved. It was then noticed that three oblong boxes were carefully packed in a wagon, and the father drove away with them.

Nothing more was heard of Coy until his recent death was announced, and then the story of twenty years ago was either forgotten or deemed too incredible for revival. The triple burial at Palmyra on Tuesday, refreshed the strange tale in the minds of a few, and it was shown that the rumor had been correct.

The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 6 May 1882: p. 10

Henry Coy is buried at the Epworth Methodist Church Cemetery under a stone which reads “Henry – Sarah Coy and Family.” I wonder if the house has survived and still has a haunted reputation?

John Speaks of North Carolina was equally heartbroken when his young son ran off to join the Army and died in France two years later. He refused to bury the corpse and built a special room for the boy’s coffin.

KEPT FROM THE GRAVE.

DEAD SOLDIER NOT BURIED

VICTIM OF THE GREAT WAR

COFFIN AT A FARM-HOUSE

PARENTS’ FOUR YEARS’ VIGIL

After a four years’ vigil over the remains of his soldier son, Mr. John Speaks, of Iredell County, North Carolina, still refuses to bury the body, which is lying in state in a little annex to his farmhouse. Although a poor man, he has persistently refused to accept the $10,000 insurance which the Government is ready to pay on the life of the dead soldier. He will not take compensation for the life of his son, who was killed by a German shell.

Thomas Boyd Speaks, the son, was 15 years of age when he volunteered for service overseas, without the knowledge or consent of his father. The latter was distressed, and made efforts to secure the release of the boy, but without success. Two years after he had enlisted in the “Iredell Blues,” at Statesville, Thomas Speaks was killed in action near the Argonne Forest, a little over a month before the armistice was signed. He was buried in France, but in 1921 the body was sent to the United States with thousands of other Americans who had fallen in battle.

For seven months John Speaks slept every night in the same room with the flag-draped coffin, and when this became known to the county physician, the sheriff, and the welfare superintendent, acting on reports of neighbours, called on the farmer. They found, however, that the presence of a metal coffin was neither dangerous nor obnoxious to the public. In deference to public opinion, however, the father agreed to the removal of the body from the family living room, and constructed a small building in the garden to shelter it. There it has rested ever since.

The building is only 8 ft. square, is neatly weather-boarded, and has small windows at each end, with a little porch across the front. Pots of flowers and shrubbery adorn the entrance and sides. The coffin is wrapped in the Stars and Stripes, and rests on the box in which it was sent from Europe. The following inscription is on the coffin plate: —”Thomas Boyd Speaks, bugler, Company E, 18th Infantry.” On the walls of the room hang a hat and cap and several other articles of apparel formerly worn by the boy. A clothes brush and a plank on which letters were cut by him with a jack-knife before he enlisted are among the other relics in the room. The parents also carefully preserve a letter from the young bugler, in which he told them how much he wanted the terrible war to come to an end, and how anxious he was to return and tell them of his adventures.

John Speaks, who is 53 years of age, and is a serious-minded man, is surprised that his action has caused any concern.

He declared that any money from the Government for his son’s life would burn his fingers. He does not belong to any church, believing that they are all wrong, but he reads his Bible. Asked why he did not bury his son’s remains. Mr. Speaks said he felt certain it would not be long before the Resurrection of the Dead, and he also mentioned that his son had already been buried once, and he considered that was sufficient. New Zealand Herald, 27 February 1926: p. 2 and Charlotte [NC] Observer 25 October 1925: p. 4

Thomas Boyd Speaks who was only 17 when he died, now lies buried with his parents at Smith Chapel Cemetery in North Carolina.

Another devastated mother of a soldier kept her boy’s corpse in a glass-topped coffin until they could be buried together. It took thirty years.

THIRTY YEARS UNBURIED.

A Mother and Her Mummified Son Laid in the Same Grave.

Louisville, Ky., Feb. 8. A remarkable funeral took place at Rock Island, Tenn., yesterday, that was the talk of the whole county. The dead were a mother and her son, and the most remarkable feature of the event was that the son had been dead and unburied for thirty years. The truth of this is vouched for by responsible parties, who have seen the body at various times.

During the civil war the woman’s son, then a mere lad, enlisted in the Confederate service and was killed at the battle of Murfreesborough. He was an only son—his mother’s idol—and the shock completely prostrated her. She passionately declared that she would never part with her son while she lived, and that when death claimed her also both should be buried in one grave. She had an air-tight cedar casket made with a glass top, in which the body was laid. This was placed in a room assigned for the purpose, where the mother often repaired to commune with the dead. The body did not putrefy, but gradually became mummified. Thirty years it lay there. At last it was removed, and the devoted mother and her son were buried side by side in one grave.

An immense procession followed the bodies to their resting place. New York Times 9 February 1893: p. 1

In a less fraught story, this gentleman, like some very public Bluebeard, kept his first wife to hand in a box.

TWO WIVES BUT NO QUARRELS.

One of the Women is Petrified and Kept in a Box.

J.N. Rickles, the proprietor of a carriage establishment at Chanute, Kan., enjoys the unique distinction of having two wives who do not quarrel, although they are frequently in contact. He was visited recently by Mr. Broadhead of St. Louis. While the two men were talking in Mr. Rickles’ office Mrs. Rickles came in and was introduced.

“This is my wife—that is, one of my wives,” said Mr. Rickles. “She is wife No. 2. My first wife is over there in the corner.”

Mr. Broadhead considered the remark a most unusual one. Noticing his perplexity Mr. Rickles volunteered to explain. He led the salesman to a pine box in one corner of his establishment. Lifting a lid off the box he displayed to the astonished salesman the form of a petrified woman. The form was perfect and the features almost as natural as one could expect to see in life. Mr. Broadhead says that Rickles explained to him that his first wife had died nearly a quarter of a century ago, while he was living in what is known as the “bad lands” in North Dakota. Several years later he had the body exhumed for removal and found that it had turned to stone. He then concluded to keep it in his possession and since then has taken the body with him wherever he went. In this instance Mrs. Rickles No. 2 is not the least bit jealous of having Mrs. Rickles No. 1 in the house. Marshall [MI] Statesman 4 May 1894: p. 6

In this next article, the daughter who so carefully buried her mother and sister in the basement gave an excuse rarely heard in 1913: The two dead women had been afraid of having their bodies snatched.

BODIES OF TWO WOMEN UNEARTHED IN HOUSE

Daughter in Hospital, Held Pending Investigation.

Tells St. Louis Police She Buried Mother and Sister Because They Feared Cemeteries.

St. Louis, Mo., April. 22. The bodies of Mrs. Ernestine Kommichau and her daughter, Selma, were unearthed this afternoon in the basement of a building at 2412 South Broadway. Marie Kommichau, another daughter, confined in the City Hospital with a broken leg, is under arrest and will be held pending an investigation. The three women occupied the house three months ago. Three weeks ago Marie said her sister had died and the mother had taken her body to Illinois for burial.

Albert Stuhr, owner of the building, early today visited the premises and reported the peculiar odor to the authorities. Detectives located the newly-made grave and the bodies were found partially encased in concrete.

Marie Kommichau, whose broken leg resulted from a fall down stairs, is 49 years old. She declared at the hospital this afternoon that her mother had died of senility and her sister of heart trouble caused by excessive use of headache powders. She explained that with her mother and sister she had conducted a notion store in the front room of the house at No. 2412 South Broadway for nearly twenty years.

Afraid of Cemeteries

“My mother and sister were afraid of being buried in cemeteries,” she said. “They were afraid their bodies would be stolen and also afraid that they would be buried alive. That was the only reason I did not have their bodies attended to in the usual way.

Before my mother died, she made sister and me promise that we would not take her body out of the house, so the undertakers could get her,” said Miss Kommichau. “We had no doctor for her—there has not been a doctor in our house for ten years, and a doctor could have done mother no good.

“We put her body in a showcase which we took from the notion store and poured plaster of Paris around the glass and cracks to keep the air out. We kept the showcase containing the body upstairs in ta rear room. No one knew for none of the neighbors had paid any attention to mother and they did not inquire about her.

“When sister died I knew that people would ask about her and that if neighbors found out I was keeping her body they would ask about mother too. So I told the neighbors that mother had died and that Selma had taken her to Illinois for burial.

Buried Both Bodies in Basement

“Then I took both bodies into the basement. I laid them on the basement floor and poured plaster of Paris and cement over them.”

Marie said that she needed help in removing the body of her mother from the showcase and called in a German woman who was passing the store and whom she never saw before.

“She was clumsy,” continued Marie, “and was no help. I told her she needn’t mind about staying. I never saw her again and I don’t know whether she ever told anyone.”
Marie said that one man, Adam Almeroth, living here, knew of the deaths.

“He is a very religious man,” said Marie. “He has called on us now and then for a long while. He said prayers over mother’s body and over sister’s body. I don’t think he knew the bodies were buried in the basement, for I don’t remember ever telling him.”
Marie asked the police not to allow the bodies of her mother and sister to be removed from the house.

Mrs. Ernestine Kommichau was 79 years old and Selma was 50 years old.

The bodies were so disintegrated that identification was difficult. From the neck of each was suspended a crucifix. At the feet of each was a porcelain urn of the kind sometimes used to hold holy oil. The graves were decorated with two small cedar trees, a wire cross and a mussel shell. Under the corpses was a layer of quick lime. Dallas [TX] Morning News 23 April 1913: p. 2

In 1945 the mummified body of a woman, found in her daughter’s bedroom, caused a sensation in Washington D.C. when it emerged that mummy dearest had died in 1912 and had exacted a strange death-bed promise.

UNDERTAKER SPREADS SOME LIGHT ON MUMMIFIED BODY FOUND IN CAPITAL

Pittsburgh, April 23. Edgar E. Eaton of Wilkinsburg, Pa., veteran undertaker, cast some light on the grisly story of Mrs. Mary E. Woodward, whose mummified body was found in Washington, D.C., this week, more than 32 years after her death. The perfectly-preserved body was found in an ancient casket in her daughter’s bedroom by investigators. The daughter, also named Mary E. Woodward, died two days ago at the age of 79.

Eaton said the eerie situation began in March,, 1912 when Mrs. Woodward died in St. Louis

“There may have been some trouble over burying the mother in St. Louis, but I don’t know,” Eaton said.

“The first I recall is that her body was brought here on March 30, 1912—17 days after her death. We re-embalmed it April 15.

“Miss Woodward asked us to keep the body here and took rooms in Wilkinsburg. We fixed a room, and every day she would come and sit there.”

Eaton said Miss Woodward always brought along a large cat and believe it to be the mummified cat which the investigators also found.

“We were told that she had promised her mother on her deathbed never to be parted from her in this life.

“The body stayed here until the Board of Health told her it would have to be buried, although it was perfectly preserved. We shipped it to Washington on Aug. 23, 1912,” Eaton related.

Eaton said he heard nothing more of Miss Woodward until a Philadelphia embalmer told him of a strange case of a daughter who had kept her mother’s body and brought it to him.

The Charleroi [PA] Mail 23 April 1945: p. 2

It is often found that, in many of these stories, the beloved corpse is either abandoned or kept in less-than-hygienic or respectful conditions. In a notorious recent case in San Francisco, a hoarder daughter kept her mother’s corpse for five years in a house seething with vermin. This father kept his child’s coffin under the porch:

KEPT A CORPSE IN THE HOUSE

Dead Child of a California Man Unburied for Five Years.

Los Angeles, Ca., July 2. For five years past “Whistling” Davis, of Long Beach, has kept the corpse of his dead child in a little coffin in house at a locality known as the Willows. The neighbors have at intervals remonstrated and threatened without avail. He has stubbornly refused to bury the body or permit any one to have it interred. Lately the neighbors became excited about the affair, the coroner was notified, and is about to commence an investigation, it being held that there is a law making it illegal for a person to thus retain the body of a deceased human being. Officers went to the beach to arrest the man. On going to his house they found the little casket containing the body under the porch. They took it in charge, and upon opening found in it the little dried skeleton. An inquest will be held tomorrow. Daily Inter Ocean [Chicago, IL] 3 July 1895: p. 2

In a similar story, from 1904 Kentucky, a child’s corpse was abandoned at the local undertaker’s establishment for eleven years. The infant was at long last buried when it was found that the parents—a local doctor and his wife—had disappeared.

Ruminating over the psychology of corpse-collecting, I have to wonder if there is an as-yet-undefined psychological condition to explain it. It is well-known that hoarding is often triggered by a loss or bereavement. Is there a form of hoarding, that involves a corpse, rather than used tin-foil and cottage-cheese containers?

Alternate theories? chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

A chapter titled “Bone of My Bone: Collecting Corpses, Relics, and Remains” in The Victorian Book of the Dead tells of other mourners who just could not let go. The book also tells of a gentleman who lived in his wife’s tomb so he could gaze adoringly at her body in her glass-topped casket.

For other corpse collectors see Mr Moon and His Mummified Molly, The Casket in the Parlor, The Seven Babies in No. 77, and A Man Buries Himself Alive.

Chris Woodyard is the author of A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death, The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead.

A is For Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death

I’m delighted to announce the publication of my latest book A is for Arsenic: An ABC of Victorian Death. The book is available at Amazon in the USA, the UK, Canada, and Australia, but I’m told that it can be ordered by your favorite bookstore or library from book distributor Ingrams. (Please ask your library or bookstore to order it!) I’m told that Ingrams distributes to Barnes & Noble, Walmart, Target, Chapters/Indigo, Blackwell, Foyles, and a host of other stores, so those retailers either have it for sale on their website or it is in their database so you can order it. If you’d like a signed copy, please contact me with a message on this page or at my Victorian Book of the Dead FB page.

A is for Arsenic is a guide to the basics of Victorian mourning. The book is 208 pages packed with the basics of Victorian mourning and death, with brilliantly gothic illustrations by Landis Blair. Each entry includes a pen and ink illustration along with 19th-century anecdotes ranging from macabre stories to jokes from the Victorian press that explain the concepts and artifacts of Victorian death. (Plus sinister little poems in homage to Edward Gorey.)

I answer your dead-serious questions including: Why did body snatchers strip a body before carrying it away? How long do you mourn for someone who has left you money in their will? What was a coffin torpedo? What is inheritance powder? Who killed off keening? What is dead water? A is for Arsenic also debunks several Victorian mourning myths.

There are 26 alphabetical entries—from Arsenic to Zinc, (see below) along with an informative glossary, appendix, and detailed bibliography. Here are the topics: A – Arsenic; B – Bier; C – Crape; D – Death Token; E – Embalming; F – Fisk Burial Case; G – Gates Ajar; H – Hearse; I – Ice Box; J – Jet; K – Keen; L – Lychgate; M – Mute; N – Necropolis; O – Obelisk; P – Post Mortem; Q – Queen Victoria; R – Resurrection Men; S – Shroud; T – Tear Bottle; U – Undertaker; V – Veil; X – Sexton; W – Weepers; Y – Churchyard; Z – Zinc

Appendix: Mourning Etiquette

Glossary

Bibliography

208 pages

Size: 9 x 6” trade paperback

ISBN: 978-0-9881925-4-6

Retail Price: $18.95

Kestrel Publications, 1811 Stonewood Dr., Dayton, OH 45432-4002, 937 426-5110. E-mail: invisiblei@aol.com

A Child Buried Alive and Saved on the Dissection Table: c. 1830s

Even grave-robbers may once in a while be the unconscious means by which a human life is saved. Mr. Hayward, who lives in Missouri, is the man who went through this strange experience. The Kansas City Journal, which I quote, contained the following: “To be buried alive while sorrowing friends stand about the open grave, and then come to life in a dissecting room, is the actual experience of George Hayward, an Independence jeweler. Although years have elapsed since he was lowered gently into his grave, the memory of the moment when the undertaker screwed down the lid of his coffin, shutting out the sunlight, and the sensations he felt as he was lowered into the grave, while a funeral dirge was being chanted by the village choir, still remains to him as a horrible dream. He was conscious from the time he was pronounced dead until he was snatched from the grave by the medical fraternity and laid on the dissecting table in the ‘interest of science.’ Mr. Hayward still retains the grim recollection of hearing the damp earth falling on the coffin lid, a mournful accompaniment to the sobs of relatives. He was unable to help himself or make a sign, and, knowing this, his agony was at times intense. His greatest agony of mind occurred when the sexton rounded up his grave on top and the sound of receding footsteps smote his ears. Mr. Hayward says that at this moment he fell into a dreamy sensation peculiar to a drowning man. How long he remained in this condition he does not know, but his sense of living again came over him when he heard a scraping on his coffin lid some little time after he had been buried.

Mr. Hayward is a man of sixty-nine years of age. For years he has been in the jewelry business at Independence, and at present conducts a shop on South Main street. He has the belief that many people are buried alive, and his own experience has a tendency to confirm this belief. To a Journal representative Mr. Hayward related this burial and resurrection experience with the unconcern of a man who does not fear death. ‘It was in Marshville, England, County Gloucestershire, where I was buried,’ said Mr. Hayward very grimly. ‘My father had a large family of boys, and he raised us all on the farm near the village. I was quite young, and it was my chief delight to go to the fields with my older brothers. In those days the farmhouses were surrounded with big yards filled with straw. This straw was allowed to rot, and in the fall of the year it was loaded on wagons and carted to the fields as a fertilizer. It was a bright morning when we started for the fields, and I ran ahead of the horses. The horses in England are not driven with reins, but they follow the command of the voice. After reaching the field the pitching of the straw commenced. The men used hop picks, which are fashioned somewhat after a heavy pitchfork. While standing near one of the hands, by accident I was struck on the head with one of the picks. It penetrated my scull, and at the time made me feel faint and dizzy. My injury was not considered serious. After returning to the house I was sent into the cellar, and, much to my surprise, I could see in the dark as well as in the light. After coming from the cellar my strength failed me, and I was soon bedfast. Two doctors were called. One of them insisted that my condition was due to the blow on the head, the other that I had pleurisy. At any rate two weeks elapsed, and my eyes closed in supposed death. It was death as far as my relatives were concerned, yet I was painfully conscious of every movement going on around me. My eyes were half closed, and as I was laid out I heard my elder brother, John, walk into the house. I saw him approach the cot with tears in his eyes, and sympathizing friends consoled him by asking him to dry his tears. “He is gone,” they said, and other similar expressions were used around the bier. Well-known faces would peer down at me as I lay with my eyes half closed. Tears rained on my face as the burial shroud was wrapped around my body. As soon as the undertaker arrived I knew I was to be buried alive. Try as I would, nothing could break the spell which bound me. Every action and every word spoken are as distinct to my mind now as then. Well, the time for the funeral arrived, and the service was preached over my living but rigid body. The undertaker approached and the lid of my little prison-house was fastened down. Life seemed all but gone when this took place; but, as I stated, no effort of mine could break the spell. The coffin was shoved into the wagon, and the trundling of the vehicle sounded in my ears. I was painfully conscious of the fact that I was soon to be lowered into my grave. Strange as it may seem, at times I did not feel fear at my impending fate. The coffin was taken out of the wagon and lowered into the grave. In those days boxes were not used as a receptacle for the coffin. The clods of earth fell heavy on the lid of the casket. There I was being entombed alive, unable to speak or stay the hands of my friends. My effort to move proved futile, and the close air of the coffin seemed stifling to me. Suddenly the shoveling ceased and the silence of the tomb was complete. I did not seem to have the fear then that a person would naturally expect under such circumstances. All I remember is that the grave is a lonely place, and the silence of the tomb was horribly oppressive. A dreamy sensation came over me, and a sense of suffocation became apparent. My whole system was paralyzed; were it otherwise my struggles would have been desperate. How long I remained in this condition I do not know. The first sense of returning life came over me when I heard the scraping of a spade on my coffin lid. I felt myself raised and borne away. I was taken out of my coffin, not to my home, but to a dissecting room. I beheld the doctors who had waited on me at my home, dressed in long white aprons. In their hands they had knives. Through my half-closed eyes I saw them engaged in a dispute. They were trying to decide how to cut me up. One argued one way, while the other doctor took another view of the matter. All this I witnessed through my half-open eyes. My sense of hearing was remarkably acute. Both approached the table and opened my mouth to take out my tongue, when, by superhuman effort, my eyelids were slightly raised. The next thing I heard was: “Look out, you fool, he is alive!” “He is dead,” rejoined the other doctor. “See, he opens his eyes!” continued the first doctor. The other physician let his knife drop, and a short time after that I commenced to recover rapidly. Instead of cutting me up they took me home. There was great rejoicing among my relatives. I owed my life to the doctors’ dispute as to what ailed me during my illness. I suppose I was kept alive for some purpose,” continued Mr. Hayward, as he finished his grewsome tale, “for I am the father of ten children.”

The Encyclopaedia of Death and Life in the Spirit-world, Vol. 3, John Reynolds Francis, 1900

Mrs Daffodil’s Aide-memoire: There are a shocking number of actual first-person narratives from persons buried alive, only to be saved by thieves or Resurrectionists. One English doctor investigating premature burial estimated that 2,700 people a year in England and Wales were buried alive. To counteract this distressing trend, an Association for the Prevention of Premature Interment was founded in 1895 by Colonel Edward P. Vollum, a US Army surgeon, and Sir Benjamin Ward Richardson, eminent sanitary reformer and anaesthetic researcher. One of the suggestions made was to leave a flask of lightly stoppered chloroform in each coffin so that the person buried alive could drift painlessly off into a real death. When Dr. Richardson died in 1896, he was cremated–nonsensically, another method advocated for avoiding premature interment. One must question the logic that promotes being burned alive as a more desireable outcome than being trapped in an airless casket.

For more accounts of burial alive, please see this post.

The account above appears in The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Mrs Daffodil invites you to join her on the curiously named “Face-book,” where you will find a feast of fashion hints, fads and fancies, and historical anecdotes

You may read about a sentimental succubus, a vengeful seamstress’s ghost, Victorian mourning gone horribly wrong, and, of course, Mrs Daffodil’s efficient tidying up after a distasteful decapitation in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales.

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead. And visit her newest blog, The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Boiling Bodies: 1877

Boiling Bodies.

For a week or more absurd stories having been afloat about the “wholesale” boiling of human bodies in a building on the Groveport pike. The local press, knowing that there was nothing in the report worth noticing, or that had not been noticed, made no mention of the matter for obvious reasons. Nevertheless, when anything of this kind gets started, there is no telling where it will stop. The result in this instance is that several persons have examined the graves of friends to see whether the same had been disturbed. These friends were led to believe that cords of skeletons were being made, and that to keep the boiling kettles going the grave-yards were being ransacked every night.

The facts are as stated in The Dispatch two or three years ago. Dr. Blesch has an establishment for the articulation of skeletons of all kinds. He sold to the Agricultural College the horse, cow, sheep, hog, dog, cat, monkey, ant-eater, hyena and antelope, and placed in the museum of the Columbus Medical College the skeleton of an elephant. The bones of these animals, except those of a domestic character, were obtained from Sells Brothers’ menagerie. Human bones received for articulation come from dissecting tables. Two or three years ago, when Dr. Blesch made his exhibition of skeletons at the State Fair, The Dispatch and other papers gave particulars.

All that need be said at this time is that, for sensational purposes, stories have been circulated that are not founded on facts. No body was ever taken there with the flesh on. All came from dissecting tables. The Columbus correspondents of the New York Herald and Cincinnati Enquirer visited the place and satisfied themselves that there was nothing in the story, except what we have stated. Yet irresponsible parties have excited some people in that locality until they don’t know how to keep cool. For example, Jacob Fisher, in company with Aaron Fisher, Jacob Fisher, Jr., Mahlon Taylor and others, opened the graves of the late Mrs. Jacob Fisher, Sr., and of the late Mrs. Joseph Fisher, having heard that the same had been molested. They found the contents of the graves undisturbed. But so greatly disturbed were the feelings of Mr. Fisher by these stories that he declared, had the bones been missing, it was his intention to shoot Dr. Blesch and a man named Schneider.

The truth is, bones are boiled in both Medical Colleges; in almost every back room of a doctor’s office where students are—i.e. small bones of the body—and in all the large cities three are establishments like the one operated by Dr. Blesch. Before shooting anybody, gentlemen who have reason to feel aggrieved at the bone boilers, should make some effort to investigate the veracity of sensationalists who give currency to stories of this kind.

Columbus [OH] Evening Dispatch 5 April 1877: p. 4

A Ghastly Christmas Gift: 1879

Interior of a Dissecting Room with Cadavers Laid Out on Tables; Wellcome Collection; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/interior-of-a-dissecting-room-with-cadavers-laid-out-on-tables-240430

UNDER THE SCALPEL.

Unauthorized Dissection of a Corpse at Bellevue Hospital.

EXHUMED FROM THE POTTER’S FIELD.

The Patient’s Family Kept in Ignorance of His Death.

A GHASTLY CHRISTMAS GIFT.

A Broadway lawyer called upon the Commissioners of Charities and Correction on Saturday morning lost and stated that the body of a newsdealer named Charles Thomsen, of No. 6G Clinton street, who had died in Bellevue Hospital, had been dissected. After great difficulty in tracing it to the Morgue, Potter’s Field and other places, a part of the remains, the lawyer said, had been sent to the widow and live children in a horrible condition as a Christmas gift. The Commissioners listened to the circumstantial recital, and, at its conclusion, Mr. Brennan requested the attorney who represented the friends of Mr. Thomsen to make formal charges in writing, and he promised to cause an investigation. While a Herald reporter was at the Eleventh street office of the Commissioners yesterday the lawyer appeared and was for some time closeted with the Commissioners. Later in the day he was found at his office and was requested to give the reporter a copy of the document he had in the morning served upon the Board. The attorney at first refused, but when Informed that the reporter had seen Mrs. Thomsen in Clinton street and knew the main charges he consented to supply a copy, which is as follows:

The complaint of Wilhelmina Thomsen against divers persons in the employ of or connected with the Department of Charities and Correction in the city of New York respectfully allows:

1. That on or about the 7th day of November, 1877, Charles Thomsen, the late husband of complainant, was admitted as a patient into Bellevue Hospital for treatment of certain physical and mental aliments with which he was then suffering.

2. That on or about the 24th day of November. 1870, said complainant was informed by the physician having control of said patient’s case that said patient. Charles Thomsen. had recovered from his physical troubles, but that his mind was seriously affected and that it would be necessary to place him (said Charles Thomsen) in a lunatic asylum.

3. That complainant being unable to pay for the cure of her said late husband, upon application duly made by her for the admission of the said Charles Thomsen into the Lunatic Asylum on Ward’s Island. was informed by one of the officials of this department that her said application was granted and that her said late husband would be forthwith removed to said Lunatic Asylum and treated, and she was at the same time informed and told that she could not see her said husband sooner than in two weeks.

4. That notwithstanding the representations so made to complainant she is now Informed and believes that the said Charles Thomsen was never sent or taken to Ward’s Island, but that he was placed and kept in a room entirely by himself at Bellevue Hospital grounds, and that he ceased to live on the 9th day of December, 1879.

5. That, notwithstanding complainant’s name and residence were well known to the officials in charge at said Bellevue Hospital, she was never notified that her said husband no longer lived: that on the 15th day of December, 1879, she accidentally ascertained from an acquaintance, who had seen a notice on the previous day in a newspaper, that her said husband was dead.

6. That thereupon complainant made diligent efforts to secure possession of the body of her said late husband, and that on said 16th day of December complainant was falsely informed at the Morgue, in Twenty-sixth street, that her said late husband had been buried in Potter’s Field on the 12th day of December, 1879; that in fact the body of complainant’s deceased husband had been cut up and dissected without the knowledge and consent of complainant; that in order to further impose upon and deceive complainant and in order to make her suppose that it had been buried the said body was sent to Hart’s Island on the 19th day of December. 1879.

7. That thereafter and notwithstanding since the said 15th day of December complainant was making most diligent efforts to secure possession of the body of her deceased husband for burial, she was unable, through the gross inattention and deception of the officials having the matter in charge, to obtain possession of said body until on or about the 20th day of December, 1879. and then only with the greatest difficulty.

8. That said dead body was in a horribly mangled condition when received by complainant; that the greatest portion of the flesh had been removed from said body and parts of the skeleton were entirely wanting.

9. That in addition to the aforementioned acts a ring which had complainant’s maiden name engraved upon it, and which was worn by said deceased during his entire stay at Bellevue Hospital, was not restored to complainant, although the same has been repeatedly demanded by her.

10. That the complainant verily believes that her late husband’s death was either hastened or occasioned by the carelessness and inattention of the persons having charge of him, and further, that said acts complained of hereinbefore were the result of gross, deliberate and criminal dishonesty, deception and fraud, and of gross and criminal negligence on the part of the persons having immediate control over or charge of the matters herein set forth.

Wherefore complainant prays for a full, thorough and enrolling inquiry into the matters referred to herein, and for such action and relief in the premises as the facts of the case shall warrant.

WILHELMINA THOMSEN,

by Samuel Greenbaum, Attorney, No. 170 Broadway.

THE LAWYER’S STORY

Mr. Greenbaum gave the following history of the case, from memoranda taken on Sunday of the testimony of Mrs. Thomsen, her sister, Mrs. Petersen, and her brothers, William Riedell, newsdealer, of No. 387 Second avenue; Arnold Riedell, newsdealer, corner of Ninth street and Third avenue, and Andrew Riedell, newsdealer, on the corner of Nineteenth street and Broadway. Charles Thomsen, who resided for two years with his wife and five children at No. 66 Clinton street, was wounded in the army while a private in the Twenty-ninth Massachusetts regiment. He was shot in the head, but recovered. Ten years ago he lost an arm while working in a sugar refinery in this city, and of late years has kept a news stand at the corner of Stanton and Clinton streets. He had suffered from dropsy, but up to election day was, with the aid of his wife and children, enabled to keep the wolf from the door. On the night of November 6 he was taken ill, and for two days was attended by Dr. Kramer, of Second avenue, near Seventh street, who advised his removal to Bellevue Hospital for mental treatment. On the 7th he was taken there by his wife and Arnold Reidell, and was frequently visited by members of the family, whose address was registered in the Warden’s office and the various wards through which he passed. On November 24, it is charged, Dr. Swift informed Mrs. Petersen, a sister-in-law of Thomsen, that the patient must go to a lunatic asylum, and on that day the wife received a postal card from the hospital asking her to buy some shoes for her husband. On Monday, November 24, the wife gave her husband some clothing in Ward 24. Dr. Swift then represented that the patient was improving, but would require asylum care. At the hospital she was given a card to Mr. Blake, Superintendent of Outdoor Poor, who on November 29, after taking her application, promised to have her husband sent to the Ward’s Island Lunatic Asylum. On the 30th, with her brother Arnold, she called again at the hospital and found the patient locked up in a separate cell in the Insane ward. There he conversed quite rationally with her and Arnold for about an hour. Supposing that he would be sent at once to the asylum, as promised, and inasmuch as Superintendent Blake had, as alleged, told her on the 30th that she could not see him for two weeks, the wife ceased her visits. She claims that the residence of his friends and family was a matter of record.

THE NEWS OF HIS DEATH.

One may judge of her surprise then, the two weeks having elapsed and the anxious wife being on her way to Eleventh street on December 15 to get a pass to visit him, when she met a neighbor who informed her that she had read in a German newspaper a notice of the death of her husband. The poor woman hurriedly went to her brother William, and together they repaired to the hospital, only to learn that the husband she had cared for so tenderly in his sickness had died in Ward 6 on the night of December 9.

Leaving the lawyer’s notes, which cover many foolscap pages, the sequel is better told in the words of the bereaved woman, as given to a Herald reporter in her humble room in the basement of No. 66 Clinton street yesterday.

“Brother William and I,” the widow said, “after leaving the hospital went to the Morgue. The keeper (White) said I was notified of Charles’ death, and that he was buried on the 12^th. I asked where, he answered, ‘In Potter’s Field, of course.’ A man standing by added, ‘You can’t get the body any more.’ We came away, Mrs. Petersen and I then went to Superintendent Blake and asked why no notice had been sent us of the death. He asked us to wait until the hospital messenger came. When he arrived the messenger said. ‘Mrs. Thomsen, it is the neglect of the hospital people. I got no paper for you.'”

The widow, among her little children, hesitated, and for a few minutes was unable to proceed with the recital of her search for her husband’s body and her visit to Mr. Blake, who on the 18th promised to do all in his power to get the body back from Potter’s Field. Tears started unbidden, and when she had become more composed she described her successful efforts to recover her husband’s clothing and her failure to find a wedding ring she had given him, bearing the inscription of “Wilhelmina Reidell, 1867,” her maiden name and the date of their marriage.

“After Mr. Blake’s promise, some of us went,” she continued, “nearly every day to the Morgue for the body. On the 20th brother Andrew and Undertaker Donohue, of Second avenue, with a zinc box, went to Hart’s Island. The man who has charge of burials denied that the body had arrived until the day before (the 19th), and said that he could not send it down that day, as the boat would not wait for it. After vain efforts to get the body it was sent down on the 25th.”

A MUTILATED BODY SURRENDERED.

“When and in what condition did you secure it?” asked the reporter.

“On the 26th brother Arnold and the undertaker got the body and took it to the office of the former in Second avenue, near Twenty-first street, from which it was buried on Saturday last. I did not see the body, but brothers William and Arnold, who did see it, tell me that the skull was cut away, the lower jaw missing, the only arm he had gone, some of his ribs broken and not half a pound of flesh left on the whole body. The sinews were all exposed. He was all ready to be boiled.”

At this point the poor widow was so overcome that the reporter withdrew.

According to information obtained at the Morgue yesterday afternoon Mr. Thomsen’s body was mutilated because the clerk of the hospital neglected to give notice that the deceased had a wife or friends. The body was sent to the Dead House for examination. An autopsy was held, and then, as no one appeared to claim the remains, they were considered as “unknown,” and turned over to the doctors for dissection. To get a little light on the mystery the reporter called at the clerk’s office in the hospital for a copy of the first entry made on the arrival of the patient.

SINGULAR CONDUCT OF A CLERK.

Mr. Dennis Sullivan, the clerk, refused to permit the copy to be made, and he would not allow the reporter to even see it.

“What is all this row about any way?” put in a bystander.

“Oh, it’s that Thomsen case,” replied Sullivan with a prolonged and significant wink. “Well,” he went on, “if your paper wants anything off these books ask the Warden in the room above.”

The reporter ran up to the Warden’s room and the necessary permission, but on his return the clerk still refused to show the books and said that he would take no man’s word. Mr. Sullivan was then informed that Bellevue Hospital was a public institution, paid for by the people and managed by the people’s servants, and that its records were public property and could not be hidden away by a subordinate officer. He angrily retorted that he knew his business and he had received positive orders from the Warden.

“But the Warden says you shall show your books.”

“I will see the Warden myself;” and the clerk ran upstairs only to return and acknowledge that the books were to be produced, But he added that he could not see why there should be so much fuss made about such a little matter. The entry in the register read as follows:

November 7, Charles Thomsen, aged 35 years; No. 60 Clinton street; German; fourteen years in the country; newsdealer; ward No.25; cerebral disease.

From this office the reporter went to the Morgue, where the man’s body had been received after death. Mr. White, the keeper, promptly opened his books and showed the entry which had been “made up” from the slip of paper which Clerk Sullivan had sent down with the body. But it seems that Mr. Sullivan’s second memorandum did not agree with the first, for it read:

December 9, Charles Thomsen, ago 39; seventeen years in the country; friends at No. 66 Clinton street; disease–pyaemia, or blood poisoning.

The last five words were copied by Mr. White from the Board of Health’s certificate. In the Clerk’s entry he made Thomsen’s age thirty-five years. Mr. White, the clerk of the Morgue, says that on the slip of paper sent to him the age was thirty-eight, and the deceased was said to have been seventeen years in the country instead of fourteen years, as stated in the hospital register. “This is the kind of work we have half of the time here, since Clerk Sullivan came in,” remarked one of the Morgue attendants.

NEVER GOT THE NOTICE.

The messenger who carries notices to friends when patients die said he had never received a notice the death of Thomsen, nor was he ever ordered to carry such a message to the widow, at No. 66 Clinton street. When the clerk said he had he made a mistake. The clerk of the Morgue said this was a fair specimen of the hospital clerk’s way of “doing business.” He failed to notify women of the death of their husbands, and when no one turned up to claim the bodies they were dissected by the surgeons, who were ignorant of the real facts in the case.

According to the record in the Morgue register the man died on the 9^th of December. The body was sent to Hart’s Island December 14, and was disinterred from the Potter’s Field December 23 and reinterred in the Lutheran Cemetery December 24. The young man who handled and took charge of the body after the surgeons had finished the autopsy declared that only the usual incisions were made, and that there was no unnecessary mutilation. In regard to the charge that the widow was not allowed to see the body, Mr. White said that the Board of Health specially ordered in all cases that bodies on being removed from the Potter’s Field should be put into air tight cases, and that they should not be opened by any one while they remained in the custody of the city authorities.

An effort was made by the reporter to find Dr. Flores, who was in attendance on Thomsen at the time of his death; but he was said to be out of town on a vacation. His assistant said that at the autopsy on Thomsen’s body there were found in the skull two apoplectic clots–one, an old clot in the brain substance, undergoing softening; the other a recent clot on the substance of the brain. The gentleman who gave this information also remarked that he did not understand why the newspapers should be so much interested in the case.

Dr. Swift said that Thomsen was assigned to him on his arrival at the hospital. He found the patient partially unconscious. He could speak a little but not intelligently, and merely mumbled to himself. His wife said he had been losing his mind for some time, but she did not even hint that he had been troubled with apoplexy. When the patient lost his mind he was put in the insane ward of the hospital and not sent to the asylum on the Island. This, said one of the officials, was why the wife was told that she could see her husband in “two weeks” by a doctor who supposed that the man was at Ward’s Island, where the rule is that patients can be seen only once in two weeks. So in two weeks she went to see her husband, and could not find him, for meanwhile he had died at Bellevue and was then awaiting identification at the Morgue, and she had not been notified by the hospital clerk of her death.

“COME IN TO-MORROW.”

A reporter called at the Department of Charities and Correction for some explanation and a copy of the charges–which were later obtained from the attorney –in the Mutual Life Insurance building, but the Commissioners were all absent. Mr. Blake was then told some of the statements made by the widow. He admitted that he knew her; that she had been there frequently; that he knew one of the brothers Reidell, and that Commissioner Brennan was then investigating the matter. “Come in to-morrow,” said Mr. Blake, pleasantly, “and he’ll give you all the facts better than I can.”

New York [NY] Daily Herald 30 December 1879: p. 9

I regret that I have been unable to find any further information about this shocking case or if anyone was ever charged with a crime. An article on 31 December 1879 in the Herald did not add any fresh details except to talk about the shocking state of the remains. The undertaker said that he had been in business fifteen years and had never seen so sickening a spectacle.

Chris Woodyard is the author of The Victorian Book of the Dead, The Ghost Wore Black, The Headless Horror, The Face in the Window, and the 7-volume Haunted Ohio series. She is also the chronicler of the adventures of that amiable murderess Mrs Daffodil in A Spot of Bother: Four Macabre Tales. The books are available in paperback and for Kindle. Indexes and fact sheets for all of these books may be found by searching hauntedohiobooks.com. Join her on FB at Haunted Ohio by Chris Woodyard or The Victorian Book of the Dead and on Twitter @hauntedohiobook. And visit her newest blog The Victorian Book of the Dead.

Hung by a Corpse – Occupational Hazards for the Resurrectionist

Hung by a Corpse – Occupational Hazards for the Resurrectionist

Life for the Resurrectionist, while certainly nasty and brutish, may also have been gravely shortened by their profession. Oddly enough, people resented those who unearthed and sold their loved ones’ bodies, no matter how much it advanced scientific knowledge, and they put up stiff opposition to the body-snatcher’s clandestine activities.

A RESURRECTIONIST KILLED
Grave Robbing at Mount Hope, Ky., Receives a Bloody Check.
Louisville, Ky., Dec. 18. News of the shooting of a grave robber at the cemetery in Mount Hope was received here yesterday. Several robberies had been committed and when the remains of Miss Morris were interred her fiancé watched the grave. Two men came at midnight and began digging. “Smiley” Jordan, a farm hand of the neighbourhood, was killed, but his companion escaped the fusillade of bullets. Marion County Herald [Palmyra, MO] 20 December 1894: p. 2

Normally physicians did not go into the field in search of specimens, but perhaps this unfortunate decided to cut out the middle man.

BODY SNATCHER KILLED
Syracuse, N.Y., May 18. Dr. Henry W. Kendall was found in a meadow near the county poor house cemetery this morning with a bullet hole between his eyes. A full kit of resurrectionists tools were found near the body. It is supposed that he was engaged in body snatching. He cannot live. The Atchison [KS] Daily Champion 19 May 1882: p. 1

Sad mistakes sometimes occurred.

FRENZIED FATHER KILLS WRONG MAN BY MISTAKE
Great Falls, Mont., May 10. Last night the body of the baby of Mr. and Mrs. W.C. Conroy was stolen from the grave in the local cemetery. This morning the father of the dead babe, while hunting the grave robbers, killed Joseph Hamilton, former sheriff of this county, mistaking him for the robber of his child’s grave. Fairbanks [AK] Daily Times 11 May 1911: p. 1

And there seemed to be little honor among corpse-thieves. In one particularly appalling instance, in Ohio an elderly, retired Resurrectionist named Beverly Taylor was murdered, along with his wife and grand-daughter, by his former colleagues, who sold the bodies to the Ohio Medical College: the same institution which Taylor had once supplied.

Sometimes there was disagreement over the spoils of the grave. Usually an episode like the following would conclude in the arrest or lynching of the grave-robbers, rather than the grave defenders.

GRAVE ROBBER KILLED
Farmer Indicted for Shooting Wm. Gray, of Cantrell Party.
Indianapolis, March 14. Lucius Stout and Hampton West, farmers living 15 miles north of Indianapolis, were indicted today at Noblesville for the murder of Wm. Gray at Frankfort, in a grave yard battle over the possession of a corpse, in which Stout and West opposed Cantrell and his gang of thieves. The evidence before the grand jury showed Stout and West came upon Cantrell and his gang of thieves just as the latter was lifting a corpse from the grave in Beaver cemetery. West and Stout opened fire upon the gang, one bullet killing Gray, while the others escaped. Cantrell and his companions testified before the jury. They said Gray was buried in the swamps near the cemetery. Iowa City [IA] Press-Citizen 14 March 1903: p. 1

I thought something didn’t quite ring true in this squib. Were Stout and West at the cemetery just as vigilante guardians of the grave? Well, not exactly…

The investigation of the operations of ghouls in the vicinity of Indianapolis, Ind., has taken a new and unexpected turn. The grand jury at Noblesville returned an indictment against Lucius Stout and Hampton West, charging the two men not only with grave robbery, but with murder. Both men are prominent and wealthy farmers. For years, according to the testimony of half the hundred witnesses who appeared before the jury, the two have been the most conspicuous figures among the mourners at all the funerals of the country-side. Even when they were unacquainted with either the dead or the surviving relatives, they were present at the graveside when the corpse was lowered to its last resting place. Suspicion on this account, has rested on the men for some time, but their wealth and position shielded them from open accusation Cantrell’s arrest and subsequent confession, however, implicated both men, and their arrest followed. The indictment returned charges them with the murder of William Gray in September, 1901. At midnight West and Stout, proceeding to a grave in the Beaver cemetery, surprised Cantrell and his gang at work removing the corpse that the two farmers had come to secure. Hot words followed, and both parties drew revolvers. A running fire ensued, in which Gray was mortally wounded and West’s forehead was grazed by a bullet. He bears the scar to-day. During the battle in the midst of the little churchyard, the combatants sheltered themselves behind the grave stones. Cantrell and his men, including Samuel Martin and Walter Daniel, two self-confessed ghouls, running short of ammunition, were forced to abandon Gray. The latter was taken by West and Stout to the West home, where it is alleged he died. By a strange turn in fate, Gray’s body, it is alleged, next made its appearance in the dissecting room of an Indianapolis medical college. Another story, however, relates that upon Gray’s death West and Stout buried his corpse in a swamp near the West home. The Indiana [PA] Democrat 18 March 1903: p. 10

Rufus Cantrell, “The King of the Ghouls,” sang like a ghoulish canary, implicating Stout in the chloroforming of a young woman, the murder of a police officer, and several other unsolved murders. Prosecutors were dubious and in the end Stout seems to have gotten off on a procedural technicality.

Many sextons and graveyard guards thought it prudent to arm themselves. There are thrilling reports of gun battles among the tombstones.

A RESURRECTIONIST KILLED
Last Monday night, Jacob Swein, the sexton of the new City Burial Ground, in Cincinnati, was awakened by a man in his employ, and told that some one was in the grave yard and engaged in digging up bodies. Mr. S., taking his gun, went out, and saw three persons, one of whom advanced towards him with a knife in his hand. Mr. S. immediately raised his gun and fired, with so much certainty as to kill the body-snatcher dead in his tracks. The other two instantly fled, leaving a horse and wagon, and the implements used for digging up the graves behind them. Lebanon [PA] Courier 15 October 1852: p. 2

If it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Not only did honest Resurrection Men have to deal with over-zealous sextons with guns, there was no guarantee that the corpse they exhumed wasn’t a death-trap. An Ohio artist named Phil. K. Clover was the inventor of the “coffin torpedo.”

Good News for the Dead
Mr. Phil. K. Clover, the artist, has invented a torpedo designed to make the robbery of graves a hazardous and unpopular business, and has taken the necessary steps to procure letters patent. The torpedo may be briefly described as a miniature needle-gun. It is about six inches long, and is divided into two pieces. The first piece, which is to be nailed inside the coffin, and almost covered by the upholster, contains a spiral spring, to which are attached two small chains, which are to be fastened around the body or around the arms of the corpse. So far the invention is harmless, but just before the final closing of the coffin the second piece, containing a cartridge, and arranged on the needle-gun plan is to be screwed onto the section containing the spring. The torpedo is now ready for action. The grave-robber may dig to the coffin, and remove the covering thereof, but when he attempts to move the body he pulls the chain and sets off the spiral spring, which strikes the needle with great force, explodes the cap, and sends buckshot or ball in an upward direction. The grave-robber, stooping over his work is liable to be shot with deadly effect. Under the most favorable circumstances to him he is likely to be powerfully impressed with a sense of danger, and to vacate the premises with dispatch. The torpedoes will not be very expensive, and several of them may be placed in the same coffin, so that the resurrectionist will have no assurance, when one explodes, that the danger is over. Should the article come into general use, the knowledge of its existence will have a restraining influence, and it will do its work without many fatal cases. Iowa Liberal [Lemars, IA] 31 July 1878: p. 8
TORPEDOES FOR BODY SNATCHERS.
If one may judge from the patent records, live people do a good deal of thinking about death. The very latest device that has been applied to burial appliances is the “coffin torpedo,” which is designed as an effective and very summary punishment for body snatchers. Nothing less than a bomb is introduced into the coffin, before the latter is closed, the arrangement being such—we spare the reader all technical details— that any attempt to force it open will release a spring, strike a percussion cap, and set off the bomb. The thing is done, and the robber is floating in pieces about the air long before he has had any time to prepare for his sudden journey.
But what happens to the corpse? The inventor leaves us in the dark on this point—probably because the question is hard to answer. We are afraid the coffin torpedo has no very brilliant future on this account, and for the further reason that local authorities (who are notoriously difficult to deal with) might object to have their burial grounds studded with infernal machines. Electrical Engineer, Vol. 22, 1896 p. 332

Clover wasn’t the only man thinking along these lines.

SURE DEATH TO GHOULS.
A Lawyer’s Startling Device to Foil Grave Robbers.
The details of the device of Jesse Hodgin, the well-known Westfield [Indiana] attorney, to protect the grave of his wife were made public the other day, says a Noblesville (Inc.) dispatch to the Cincinnati Enquirer. The plan has been examined by experts, who unhesitatingly say that it will put a stop to body snatching by ghouls. They not only say the device will be effective, but they also indorse it because it is inexpensive.
A few inches above the rough box in the grave is an ordinary gas pipe three-quarters of an inch in diameter filled with nitro-glycerine. The pipe occupies a position lengthwise of the coffin and extends from six to twelve inches over each end. There is a cap fastened tightly on each end of the pipe to prevent the deadly explosive from leaking. Scattered promiscuously through the soil about a foot or eighteen inches above the pipe are several dozen concussion caps. A spade or any hard substance that comes in contact with these caps will explode them. The jar will in turn explode the nitro-glycerine, which would mean death to any one within twenty-five or fifty feet of the grave. It is intimated that there is sufficient nitro-glycerine in the pipe to make an excavation in the earth fifty feet square and from ten to fifteen feet deep.
While Mr. Hodgin admits that the explosion would completely destroy the body of his wife, he says he would rather see that done than to know that the remains were ever on a dissecting table in a medical college.
“And I would also know that there would be some dead ghouls somewhere in the vicinity of the grave,” he said. “The plan is original with me and my brother, but I am satisfied that it would prove a success if it was ever tried. When I first mentioned the matter to the sexton of the cemetery, he refused to allow me to put in the device on the ground that it might result in injuring some innocent parties or despoil other graves. I then consulted the trustees who have charge of the cemetery and obtained their consent.” The Newark [OH] Advocate 6 November 1902: p. 8

It is impossible to know how often these devices were deployed, but here is an incident from 1881.

A more serious incident was reported near the village of Gann [Knox County] about the same time. When three men attempted a grave robbery, they struck a torpedo which had been planted near the bottom of the grave, instantly killing one of the men and breaking a leg of one other. The third party, who was keeping a watch, succeeded in getting his companions into a sleigh, taking flight, and evading arrest. Ohio State Journal January 20, 1881.

But when it comes to poetic justice, it would be hard to top this story.

A Man Hung by a Corpse
The Cincinnati (Ohio) Gazette states that on Saturday night, a fellow was stealing a dead body from the graveyard at Cumminsville near that city, when in crossing the fence, he slipped and fell on the outside, and the rope which held the sack containing the corpse, sliding from his shoulders to his neck, at daylight his body was found hanging on the outside of the graveyard fence, while the corpse he had stolen, hung on the inside, both equally lifeless. Weekly Vincennes [IN] Gazette 12 March 1859

I will add the caveat that there’s an identical story about a man stealing a pig.

Given the many hazards inherent in the profession, I was surprised to unearth no tales of body-snatchers crushed by tipping tombstones, buried alive, or infected by diseased corpses. Except this one, about the ghastly end of one phrenologist-turned- grave-robber. This was the story my editor wouldn’t let me use in The Victorian Book of the Dead. She said it was too gruesome. Thanks to the fearless and always tasteful Undine of Strange Company for sharing!

Other grave threats to Resurrectionists? chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

Tales from the Presidential Crypts

Garfield monument — President James A. Garfield’s tomb, Lake View Cemetery, Cleveland, Ohio

President’s Day is Monday, so today let’s look at some dead presidents—particularly stories of a few strange incidents at presidential tombs. Some 19^th-century newspapers wrote about presidential graves suffering from neglect or disrepair like the overgrown grave of Thomas Jefferson in 1873, where student vandals had chiselled and chipped all the letters off of the granite monument or the once-popular tomb of William Henry Harrison, which was described as looking like a shabby bread oven in the 1890s. The tomb had been built on a hill overlooked the Ohio River. Steamboat captains would sound a reverential whistle and notify their passengers so that they could bare their heads at the simple brick vault, but the bricks were crumbling into dust by the time Harrison’s grandson came to the Presidency.

There have also been cases of genuine desecration of presidential graves: the infamous attempt to steal the body of President Lincoln from his Springfield tomb, vandals uprooting a cross at the head of John F. Kennedy’s grave in January,1970 and more vandalism there in December of 1997. And this strange disturbance at President Reagan’s grave by a person whose hobby is apparently desecrating as many presidential graves as possible. Such things happened more often in the past than one might expect, starting with George Washington.

Relics of the Father of His Country were avidly collected. One disgruntled gardener tried to collect the skull of George Washington, but was foiled. Below, a Washington biographer describes the old Washington tomb, which may still be seen today at Mount Vernon and also the condition of the General’s body. Prior to this description, the author fumes at a sacrilegious daguerreotypist offering to take pictures of tourists with Washington’s original tomb, aggressively peddling his services to people getting off the excursion boats.

This vault and inclosure were erected many years ago, in pursuance of instructions given in the following clause of Washington’s will: “The family vault at Mount Vernon requiring repairs, and being improperly situated besides, I desire that a new one, of brick, and upon a larger scale, may be built at the foot of what is called the Vineyard Inclosure, on the ground which is marked out, in which my remains, and those of my deceased relatives (now in the old vault,) and such others of my family as may choose to be entombed there, may be deposited.”

The old vault referred to was upon the brow of a declivity, in full view of the river, about three hundred yards south of the mansion, on the left of the present pathway from the tomb to the summer-house on the edge of the lawn. It is now an utter ruin. The door-way is gone, and the cavity is partly filled with rubbish. Therein the remains of Washington lay undisturbed for thirty years, when an attempt was made by some Vandal to carry them away. [1831]The insecure old vault was entered, and a skull and some bones were taken; but these comprised no part of the remains of the illustrious dead. The robber was detected, and the bones were recovered. The new vault was then immediately built, and all the family remains were placed in it. Mr. William Strickland, of Philadelphia, who designed the composition on the lid of Washington’s coffin, and accompanied Mr. Struthers when the remains of the patriot were placed in it, in 1837, has left a most interesting account of that event. On entering the vault they found everything in confusion. Decayed fragments of coffins were scattered about, and bones of various parts of the human body were seen promiscuously thrown together. The decayed wood was dripping with moisture. “The slimy snail glistened in the light of the door-opening. The brown centipede was disturbed by the admission of fresh air, and the mouldy case of the dead gave a pungent and unwholesome odor.” The coffins of Washington and his lady were in the deepest recess of the vault. They were of lead, inclosed in wooden cases. When the sarcophagus arrived, the coffin of the chief was brought forth. The vault was first entered by Mr. Strickland, accompanied by Major Lewis (the last survivor of the first executors of the will of Washington) and his son. When the decayed wooden case was removed, the leaden lid was perceived to be sunken and fractured. In the bottom of the wooden case was found the silver coffin-plate, in the form of a shield, which was placed upon the leaden coffin when Washington was first entombed. “At the request of Major Lewis,” says Mr. S., “the fractured part of the lid was turned over on the lower part, exposing to view a head and breast of large dimensions, which appeared, by the dim light of the candles, to have suffered but little from the effects of time. The eye-sockets were large and deep, and the breadth across the temples, together with the forehead, appeared of unusual size. There was no appearance of grave-clothes; the chest was broad, the color was dark, and had the appearance of dried flesh and skin adhering closely to the bones. We saw no hair, nor was there any offensive odor from the body; but we observed, when the coffin had been removed to the outside of the vault, the dripping down of a yellow liquid, which stained the marble of the sarcophagus. A hand was laid upon the head and instantly removed; the leaden lid was restored to its place ; the body, raised by six men, was carried and laid in the marble coffin, and the ponderous cover being put on and set in cement, it was sealed from our sight on Saturday the 7th day of October, 1837. . . . The relatives who were present, consisting of Major Lewis, Lorenzo Lewis, John Augustine Washington, George Washington, the Rev. Mr. Johnson and lady, and Mrs. Jane Washington, then retired to the mansion.” The Illustrated Life of Washington, Hon. J[oel] T[yler] Headley, 1860

This narrator claimed to have been present at the removal of the Washington bodies to their new tomb.

William H. Burgess, who lives in Alexandria, Va., assisted, in 1836, in building Washington’s new tomb at Mount Vernon. He says: “I was a lad then, but I remember that in removing the bodies of George and Martha to their present tomb we decided to open the coffin. I looked in and saw General Washington’s face. The body was well preserved, and the features were intact. There was nothing to indicate the time he had been dead. A minute after exposure to the air there was a collapse, and nothing was recognizable. The face looked like his pictures.” Repository [Canton, OH] 8 June 1889: p. 2

Several decades after the gardener’s attempt to get a head, there was another dire rumor about Washington’s skull.

WASHINGTON’S HEAD SAFE

No Truth in the Tale of the Tomb Desecration

[From our Regular Correspondent]

Herald Bureau,

Corner Fifteenth and G Streets, N.W.,

Washington, Sept. 29, 1887.

The story that the head of Washington was stolen from Mount Vernon and carried to Paris by curiosity hunters is pronounced by Dr. G.M. Toner as an unqualified falsehood.

The remains of Washington were removed from the old and original coffin about fifty years ago and placed in the marble sarcophagus made for that purpose, which was not only to keep out the air but so constructed and fastened that it would be next to impossible for anybody to violate the sanctity of the seals without having uninterrupted access to them for many hours.

THE SKELETON INTACT IN THE TOMB.

When the remains were transferred from the old coffin to the marble receptacle many members of the Washington family were present, with persons of prominence, and they all certified to the fact that the skeleton was all intact. After the sarcophagus was put in its place the iron grated door was locked and the key thrown into the Potomac. The old lock is still in good preservation and has never been tampered with.

During the Rebellion the grounds at Mount Vernon were held sacred and the hand of the vandal was never known to have desecrated any part of the tomb or its surroundings.

WATCHING NIGHT AND DAY.

The last resting place of Washington has been vigilantly watched ever since the present tomb was erected. Though some distance from the mansion, every device known has been used for many years to alarm the superintendent of the grounds. Now electric wires communicate with the house, making it impossible for any one to even attempt to open the iron doors.

The story, therefore, that the skull of Washington was ever removed or even profaned by the touch of vandals, Dr. Toner says, is utterly without foundation. In 1849 the Washington heirs loaned to Mr. Clark Mills the original cast of Washington’s face, made during life by the celebrated sculptor Houdon. It was never returned, but in its place, a copy which Mr. Mills claimed was in better condition than the original, was sent to the Mount Vernon mansion. It subsequently passed into the possession of Mr. McDonald, the sculptor, and is supposed to be in his possession still. Speculation was rife for a time as to who had the original. It was not, however, stolen, and is probably still in New York. New York Herald 30 September 1887: p. 6

Those pesky, overwrought headline composers were at it again in this article about an incident at the McKinley vault. There was an actual event, but no attempt to blow up the tomb.

VANDALS AT CANTON

Guards at McKinley’s Tomb Attacked

WANTED TO BLOW IT UP

That is What is Generally Believed. Great Excitement.

Dastardly Plot at Canton

Attempt Was Made Last Night to Blow Up McKinley’s Tomb.

Canton, O., Sept. 30 A strange story comes from Westlawn cemetery, where a company of regulars from Fort Wayne, Mich., is guarding the vault in which the body of the late President McKinley lies. It is to the effect that the guard on duty on top of the vault last night fired a shot at one man who refused to heed his challenge; that the shot was diverted by another man, who appeared from another direction, and that an effort was made to stab the guard.

Private Deprend was on guard duty on top of the vault at a point commanding the entrance below and the approach from the rear. Shortly before 7:30 o’clock he saw what he took to be the face of a man peering from behind a tree about forty feet from his post. He watched it for twenty minutes, he says, and at 7:45 o’clock saw the man hurry to a tree ten feet nearer. He challenged the man to halt, but this was not heeded, and the fellow approached nearer. Deprend levelled his gun and aimed to shoot for effect, but just at that instant, another man, who came toward him from the opposite side, caught the gun, threw it up, and the bullet spent in the air.

This same man struck Deprend on the right side of the abdomen with a knife or other sharp weapon, cutting an L-shaped gash in his overcoat an inch and a half long each way, and a smaller one in his blouse. The flesh was not broken, but was bruised under the cuts in the clothing. Deprend, in the struggle, fell and rolled down the side of the vault.

Lieut. Ashbridge, officer of the day, was in front of the vault and rushed to the top on hearing the shot, but the men made their escape. All members of the company, on hearing the shot, hurried to the vault, and, besides searching the cemetery, the guard was increased.

Deprend is said to be an excellent soldier, and to have a fine record with his officers. He says the man who attacked him was masked, but that the first one he saw was not masked. He saw the latter carried a white package in his right hand and something that glittered in his left.

Since the incident stories have been told in camp of some incendiary conversations overheard in the crowds that have visited the cemetery, including one today, alleging that some stranger said: “Lots of people would like to see this whole thing blown up.”

Canton, O., Sept. 30. Eight prisoners broke from the county jail here Sunday by sawing out the bars of a window opening from a court between the jail and court house. They had five minutes start when discovered. Bloodhounds were immediately put on the trail.

Canton, Sept. 30. The city is astir today over the assault on Guard Deprend at the vault in which McKinley’s body rests. Some advance the theory that one man who broke jail here last night made the attack in an effort to secure a rifle, with which to protect himself against pursuing officers. The belief is general, however, that the attack was part of a plot to blow up the tomb. Riverside [CA] Daily Press 30 September 1901: p. 1

A later article quoted a sentinel who described three men who had spoken to him as he was guarding the tomb. “One asked how long sentinels in front of the vault gates were kept on duty. I told him half an hour at a time. He asked me if there were other guards. I told him several on the hill, over the vault and at other places. The second man said he did not see the use of all this fuss: that no one would try to do any harm now.

“The third man said he was mistaken; that there were lots of people who would like to see the whole thing blown up.

“No, I had no suspicion that any of these men would have any interest in or would sympathize with any act of violence. I think they were speaking of the disposition of other classes who might be prompted to such acts.” Morning Herald Lexington KY] 1 October 1901: p. 1, 8.

One can see how this might have been twisted by an overzealous journalist into an actual attack on the monument, but the men’s remarks might equally seem suspicious: like reconnaissance for some dastardly mission.

Other papers sneered at the event as the product of a nervous guard’s brain.

The marauder scare at Canton, as nearly as we can make out, was not caused by beings in the flesh, but by spirits which are supposed to haunt cemeteries. It is not likely that there will be any further difficulty with such uncanny presences, if the officer in command of the detail will carefully exclude spirits from the camp. The Evening Times [Washington, DC] 1 October 1901: p. 4

In fact, “Particular inquiry was made as to Deprend’s sobriety. The time, it is said, established beyond all reasonable doubt that he had not been drinking….The most common belief is that the sentinel was over-wrought by the loneliness of his position; that his nerves were taxed, and that imagination contributed to some of the details related in good faith. The post is regarded as particularly isolated and depressing to a man guarding it at night.” Morning Herald [Lexington, KY] 1 October 1901: p. 1, 8.

There was definitely something to the notion of the job being particularly depressing. [See this post on Tombstone Madness.] Here is the story of a soldier who apparently had a breakdown while guarding the Cleveland grave of President Garfield. This was before the immense tomb we see today was finished. I have not found others, so the journalist may have exaggerated.

A Soldier Becomes insane While Guarding Garfield’s Tomb.

Cleveland Dispatch to Philadelphia Press.

Joseph Kashinsky, a private in Company H, Tenth U.S. Infantry, on duty at Garfield’s grave, in Lake View Cemetery, has become insane, and has been taken to Detroit for cure. The peculiar form of insanity is melancholia, and a peculiar state of affairs came to light when the case was looked up. The men on the guard dread their duty, and several cases are reported of men committing offenses for the purpose of getting punished.

Anything or any device is used to get away from the ghostly array of mounds and tombs. This is said to have driven Kashinsky insane and his incoherent language and actions carry out the impression. One man, a veteran, said: “I dread the duty, although I am not afraid of it and do not complain, but on the younger the strain is intense. Many tricks are resorted to to escape the night watches.” Kashinsky is a young Pole, but ten months a soldier, twenty-one years of age, and until this trouble came a light-hearted, healthy young man. Cincinnati [OH] Commercial Tribune, 2 April 1883: p. 2

Some newspapers attributed the young man’s insanity to the “Curse of Guiteau” (another post, another time), a malign hoodoo widely reported to have killed and driven dozens of people insane.

There had been an attempt to snatch Garfield’s body before it was placed in the temporary tomb in Lake View Cemetery so guards were felt to be necessary. “The guards are almost essential to protect the tomb from the relic fiends as from the ghouls. The guards assert that were it not for their presence, and the wire screen or fence, which completely surround te tomb, that the crowds that visit it would chip off, break up and carry away vault, casket and all as relics. As it is they break twigs from adjacent trees, reach through the wires and pluck blades of grass, pick up pebbles or anything else they can seize upon.” New Ulm [MN] Weekly Review 14 February 1883: p. 1

The Garfield tomb was a popular tourist attraction. In 1882 there were complaints of littering, theft, vandalism, and harassment of bereaved visitors by the “picnic masher element.” Lake View Cemetery decided to close its doors to the public on Sundays, except for “proper persons” who could apply for a ticket of admission. [Source: Cleveland [OH] Leader 22 August 1882.]

There was much resentment expressed in some newspapers about the expense and the “farce” of keeping up a guard of soldiers at Garfield’s grave and eventually the guard was withdrawn July 1, 1886. With this event, as well as the finishing of Garfield’s permanent tomb, a story emerged about some genuine bodysnatching:

When Secretary Endicott ordered the guard removed from Garfield’s tomb the family and friends of the dead President were alarmed. Detectives informed them that an organized band of body snatchers had plotted to desecrate the sepulchre. It was finally decided to remove the remains to an obscure vault in another corner of the cemetery. This was accomplished in darkness by a party of four chosen friends. Pittsburg [PA] Dispatch 19 February 1890: p. 1

The article goes on to describe how four prominent Cleveland business men, friends of the Garfield family, got a key to the holding vault, got Garfield’s immensely heavy coffin out of its sarcophagus, and carried it in complete darkness to an obscure vault in a little-visited section of the cemetery. Then they resealed the sarcophagus, locked the door, and went home, sworn to secrecy. Apparently one of the men hurt himself so badly in carrying the heavy coffin that he never really recovered. The article goes on to describe how people paid their respects at an empty sarcophagus, little knowing of the “necessary deception.”

Today Garfield’s massive monument at Lake View Cemetery is said to be haunted by mysterious lights and perhaps the apparition of the man himself.

Our last case concerns some truly odd events at the holding vault where the body of President Warren G. Harding and his wife were kept until the Harding Monument could be built.

Harding’s Tomb Guards Are Annoyed

Marion, O. Jan. 3. Lieutenant R.H. Harriman, commander of the guard detachment stationed in Marion cemetery to guard the vault in which reposes the body of the late President Harding, supplement a previous order, today issued instructions to the twenty-six men in his command to make every effort to capture a marauder, who, since the formation of the guard detachment, has continually annoyed the perpetual guard of six men. Gruesome disturbances including bugle blowing at midnight, ghostly noises by prowlers and throwing of stones in the direction of the vault make up the offense with which the individual or individuals will be charged if captured.

Several time soldiers have caught glimpses of a man and on several occasions have shot at him. Early one morning a guardsman chased a man for over half a mile.

It is believed by Lieutenant Harriman that the continual disturbances represent an attempt to frighten the men and to break the morale of the detachment. It is also thought that possibly people came to the cemetery to rob the graves of flowers. Elyria [OH] Chronicle Telegraph 3 January 1924: p. 8

An Associated Press story added that “at first it was thought it was small boys, but when the disturbances kept up, the guard took it more seriously.” So seriously, that Lieut. R.H. Harriman, the commander of the tomb guards, ordered his men to shoot directly at anyone causing a disturbance. The article said also “Riot guns have been sent from Fort Hayes, at Columbus headquarters for the guard detachment here, and these loaded with buckshot will be used if the disturbances continue.”

It seems unlikely that flower thieves or pranksters would be flitting about the cemetery, risking being shot. The stone throwing and ghostly noises almost suggest poltergeist manifestations.

It’s a curious thing that the stories about Garfield, McKinley and Harding all refer to events at holding vaults, rather than their finished tombs. Is there something about corpses in transit or bodies not yet laid to rest that encourages graveyard intruders?

Any other stories of presidential tomb disturbances? Signal by dark lantern to Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com

You’ll other tales of disturbed graves in The Victorian Book of the Dead, also found on Amazon and other retailers in paperback and for Kindle.

The Dead-Hole in the Cellar: A Visit to a Dissection Room: 1887

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you might have noticed a fondness for “slice of life” stories and interviews with practitioners of specialized professions like freak-makers. Today’s post offers a “slice-of-death” (in a literal sense) visit to the dissecting room of the Ohio Medical College in Cincinnati. We’ve heard before about the notorious William “Old Cunny” Cunningham, the star body-snatcher of that establishment, who is mentioned several paragraphs in as presiding over the college museum.

DEATH AND LIFE

The Scenes in a Medical College.

A Visit to the Dread Dissecting-Room by a Reporter.

How the Young Doctors Carry on the Necessary Work

A Sickening Odor Pervades the Place Where Science Operates

The Subjects Now on the Slabs and the Dead-Hole in the Cellar.

Skeleton of “Cunny,” the Grave-Robber, and Other Weird Features of the Place.

Death makes cadavers for dissection. The cadavers help to educate doctors. People must die. We must have doctors.

This story of the dissecting-room is a very old one, but people never grow tired of it. There is a mystery, a horrid fascination about the place, which ever thrills and at the same time repels mankind. Ever since medical science came to bless and protect the human race the doctor’s knife has been busy upon the dead to better understand how to save the living.

Dead men tell no tales.

The fate of being hacked to pieces grates upon the sensibilities of those in this world.

The dead can not feel.

If they could, the keen knife of the ambitious sawbones would be stayed in its course through the muscles and flesh and vitals of the helpless victims upon the stone slabs.

Soon another corps of young physicians will be turned loose from the medical colleges in this city.

The dissection-room work is nearly over. Since the 15^th of October the students of the Ohio College, on Sixth street, have improved their time by becoming acquainted with the human anatomy. Every night by the glare of the jets they have worked diligently upon the inanimate forms of some poor creatures who had no friends to bury them.

Subjects have been very scarce this year. It has been found necessary by Dr. Cilley, demonstrator of anatomy, to place ten students on one “stiff,” instead of five, as formerly. The boys have kicked considerably against being so crowded, but to no avail.

Body-snatching has become dangerous. The risk of being shot or lynched is not relished by ghouls. The law is also very severe against grave-robbing because all paupers who die in public institution whose friends do not claim them are turned over to the doctors.

The subjects are handled by the Anatomical Association.

This is a Board composed of physicians who distribute them among the various colleges according to the number of students.

The Ohio gets the most, but that college has been compelled to stint its students in cadavers to practice on.

A dead body is worth $25.

That is the market price paid for stiffs at the medical college.

The villains Ingalls and Johnson, who murdered the Taylor family, sold their three victims for $35. [Beverly Taylor, an elderly, retired body-snatcher, his wife, Elizabeth, and granddaughter Eliza Jane Lambert were murdered in 1884 and their bodies sold to the Ohio Medical College.]

Now the doctors ask questions when any one wants to sell a corpse. Since that horrible atrocity the venders of dead people are rarer and more wary. The professional body-snatchers have moved away from Cincinnati.

An Enquirer reporter was permitted to visit the Ohio Medical College a few days ago.

He saw many horrible sights, but they are necessary to science.

The students were at the time of the call listening to a lecture and the reporter pursued his tour of inspection without observation or hindrance.

The college is not an attractive place.

It is dingy, dusty, and a horrid smell of penetrating force permeates the interior.

It needs a cleaning.

The museum, which contains a valuable collection of specimens of diseased humanity, and innumerable jars of preserved monstrosities, exhales a musty odor which would try the stoutest stomach. The dust is two inches thick on the floors, windows, glass-cases and grinning skeletons.

The bones of Old Cunny, the notorious body-snatcher, hang from the railing of the balcony. His skeleton is the most conspicuous object in the museum.

The old plug-hat adorns the skull.

In his mouth, between the teeth, is the pipe he smoked before he died. Cunningham was a great character. He was in his day the most extensive grave-robber in the country. While he was janitor of the Ohio College there was never a short supply of stiffs. The faculty of the institution could always depend on “Cunny” to find the most desirable subjects, for he never had any compunctions of conscience about the grave he despoiled. Before he died the body-snatcher ordered that his body be dissected. As a mark of respect to his memory for the service he had rendered, his bones were strung on wires and hung up in the museum

Stairways on either side of the College lead to that most loathsome of all places in the average man’s estimation—the dissecting room.

The reporter entered from the west door. The room is always kept locked and the janitor had the key.

Before the threshold was reached a most noisome smell struck the olfactories of the newspaper man.

Who can describe that odor?

It is infinitely more nauseating than a charnel-house. A slaughter-house is attar of roses compared with it. The desiccating company’s building at Delhi is as sweet clover or new-mown hay after catching a whiff of the aroma in the dissecting-room.

But there is no way to prevent it.

The young doctors soon become accustomed to the stink and pursue their work on the decaying human flesh with the utmost nonchalance.

Two of them were busily occupied when the reporter stuck his nose, which he held by his hand, in the open doorway.

They were seated on stools under the glare of a gas jet which cast a lurid light on the ghastly cadaver, already mutilated beyond recognition by the skillful knives of the soon-to-be physicians. The students were on either side of the subject and looked up for a moment from their occupation to say, “how de do.” The strong light at the table made an intuitive contrast unpleasant with the gloomy aspect of the dingy room. It was not yet dark outside, but the dirt-stained windows would not admit a ray of sunlight. The ambitious and energetic students continued to examine the muscles and veins exposed by their dexterous wielding of the sharp steel.

“Pretty good subject, eh?”

“Very fair.”

The corpse, which was that of a middle-aged man, had been cut out of all shape. In fleshly places the bones protruded from the flesh.

“Nearly through with him?”

“Yes.”

Of course the votaries of science can’t stop their researches on account of sentiment for their purpose is to study the dead that the living may be preserved from untimely graves.

As the dissecting course is nearly over there is a dearth of stiffs in the Ohio College. The tables on which it is customary to lay the bodies have been piled up, and only seven of them are occupied. There is a sickening amount of debris scattered about the rooms. Bones, ribs, portions of legs, arms and headless trunks greet the visitor at every turn.

A colored boy, apparently about eighteen years old, lay stretched on his stomach across one of the slabs.

He is a fresh subject.

His arms and feet hung over the end and two or three incisions were all the marks visible upon his person.

“Rather too fat for a first-class stiff,” remarked the janitor. “The boys want lean people. Consumptives are the best. Very corpulent dead men or women are not received when we can get any other kind.”

“How many subjects have you had this winter?”

“Only ten, I think. We should have had forty to give all the students a chance to dissect the various parts. You see, when five men work on the same stiff one can dissect the arm, the second another arm, the third the head, and the other two a leg each. The boys, however, have done the best they could on the material offered. Here’s where they draw them up.”

The man walked over to a sort of elevator, where a chute extends clear to the pavement. By means of a pulley, the bodies are hauled into the dissecting-room. It was through this hole that the body of Scott Harrison was lifted to the repulsive place where it was found by his son.

Those days of horror are passed.

The college authorities will never take such chances again.

If the corpse of a prominent citizen gets within range of the knife and saw it will not be their fault.

Near this chute, connected with which are such terrible associations, was the body of a woman.

She was wrapped in a sort of bunting, but the hands and arms were exposed. It was a shapely arm, and her hands were soft and pretty.

Perhaps she was somebody’s sweetheart or wife. She could not have been more than thirty years of age. The little hand had become shriveled since death, which had occurred about one month ago.

The janitor knew nothing of her history. He believed she had come from the Hospital. If her friends had claimed the remains she would have received a decent burial.

It was impossible to tell the sex or age of any of the other subjects.

They were beyond all semblance of shape.

On a table in the east room was a pile of ribs which still held together.

Was it a man or woman?

No inexperienced, casual caller could tell what it as. The janitor said it once was part of a woman, but the doctors had completed their dissection, and before school closed the ribs would be thrown into boiling water and the result would be a mass of bleached bones, which, with the other bones would be placed together and a skeleton would adorn some anatomical museum or a doctor’s office.

“Do you pickle bodies here in summer,” was asked of the janitor.

“Sometime; but it isn’t pleasant because we can’t keep the stiffs from smelling bad.”

The two young doctors were still examining the muscles of their subject when the reporter left the scene. The horrible odor seemed to follow them down stairs into the street. It was a welcome change…from the silence of the dead-room to the active, busy hum of life.

The Cincinnati [OH] Enquirer 13 February 1887: p. 13

“This story of the dissecting-room is a very old one, but people never grow tired of it.” What a touching opening sentence–like a well-loved bedtime story! Interviews with body-snatchers were, briefly, a popular feature of many nineteenth-century newspapers. No morbid detail was spared, although the article above is unusually emphatic about the smell. It is also a surprisingly less fluent piece than is normally found in the pages of the Enquirer. One-sentence paragraphs are not typical of 1880s journalism.

In these interviews, the Resurrectionists often reiterated the idea that what they did was done in the name of Science and that they preferred to snatch the bodies of the poor and friendless. “Friendless” was the key word, for even the poor could cause a scandal or a riot by demanding their loved ones’ bodies. Janitors were frequently a reporter’s guide to the chambers of horrors. They knew the institutional workings inside and out and since they occasionally supplemented their income by collecting the odd cadaver, they could speak to the acquisitions side of the profession. As a completely random aside, medical schools today have the same aversion to overweight subjects.

Other interviews with body-snatchers? And I would kill for a photo of “Old Cunny’s” skeleton in the museum. No one I spoke to at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine knows what became of that gentleman’s earthly remains.

Chriswoodyard8 AT gmail.com