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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780253034694 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Indiana University Press |
| Publication date: | 09/15/2018 |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Sales rank: | 1,012,709 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
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Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
NEFARIOUS NEW YORK
Grave Robbers and Body Snatchers: New York
We must make a distinction between yesteryear's body snatchers and grave robbers. Body snatchers stole bodies. Why would anyone want to open a grave by the light of the moon and the screech of the owl and steal the corpse, aware that armed and angry relatives might be lying in wait? Because medical schools were desperate to gain corpses for dissection; they were allotted a limited number of cadavers — usually prisoners who'd died of natural causes, the executed, and poorhouse occupants — but since there weren't enough to go around, there was a lively trade in the unlively.
Garden-variety grave robbers, however, had baser motives than body snatchers. Rather than steal a body for the ultimate benefit of science and humanity — and make a quick buck in the process — grave robbers were interested only in swiping valuables from their exhumed victims, as if performing a postmortem mugging. The northern states, like the rest of America, yield stories of intrepid ghouls who were not afraid of a little hard work and were not hampered with an irrational fear of the dead.
Ruth Sprague died at age nine in 1816 and was buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Hoosick Falls, New York. Soon afterward, a medical student stole her body and took it to a doctor's office for dissection. Little Ruth's relatives located and reburied her remains and then erected a gravestone with the following epitaph, which records the outrage for posterity, names names, and ends with a piquant little quatrain:
She was stolen from the grave by Roderick R. Clow and dissected at Dr. P. M. Armstrong's office in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., from which place her mutilated remains were obtained and deposited here. Her body dissected by fiendish Men Her bones anatomized Her soul we trust has risen to God Where few Physicians rise.
* * *
Judge P.'s family vault in Binghamton was noted for being one of the most expensive in the state. On the night of October 23, 1884, five thieves entered it and got so far as to open Robert P.'s tomb before grave watchers scared them off. Why were they out to snatch Robert? Some authorities speculated that they wanted to hold the body for ransom. There was a rival theory, according to the papers: "A suit is pending for $5,000, the amount claimed by a physician for embalming the body, and it is thought by some that persons interested in this suit sought to ascertain how far the embalming process had been successful in preserving the body." And the only way to do that, of course, was to encounter Robert P. face-to-face.
* * *
In July 1881, a former body snatcher in Syracuse regaled a reporter with tales of his exploits in which he and his cronies raided rural cemeteries to feed the need for cadavers suffered by the medical colleges of Syracuse and Rochester. He remembered especially the time they stole the body of "a young man belonging to one of the best families in Syracuse." The corpse was well dressed, and an impoverished but imminently practical medical student took the clothing. He wore the suit on graduation day.
* * *
Henry W. Livingston ("Fighting Harry") was a famous general; his widow, who survived him by many years, became known as "Widow Mary" because of her "undying fidelity to the memory of her husband." None of this made the slightest difference to the vandals who broke into the Livingston family crypt on the grounds of their Hudson manor on April 23, 1904. They opened nearly all the coffins within and scattered the occupants' bones about the vault — including the remains of the general himself, whose winding sheet had nearly crumbled to dust. Two coffins were carried away for whatever nefarious purpose. One was the casket of Mary Livingston, who had died in 1859.
* * *
As war clouds gathered in Europe in the late 1930s, bronze became a valuable commodity among Americans, who would sell the metal to munitions factories — hence the rise of ghouls in search of scrap metal. During the weekend of December 17, 1937, thieves made a big score at Rockland Cemetery in Sparkill by stealing a 3,500-pound bronze statue from the grave of Dr. Alexander Skene, once president of the American Gynecological Society and thirty-seven years deceased. They also broke into the crypt of Major General John Charles Fremont and swiped two bronze Mexican War–era cannon. To accomplish these feats, the unsubtle ghouls brought a derrick and a truck.
Body Snatching, Part Two: When Schemes Went Awry
On occasion, graveyard expeditions did not turn out well when the stealers of cadavers became cadavers themselves. Relatives understandably did not appreciate the idea of their deceased loved ones being snatched, and sometimes they took up arms and kept vigil at gravesites.
Such was the cause of the sensation that gripped Syracuse on the morning of May 18, 1882, when Dr. Henry K. was found dying near the county poorhouse's graveyard at Onondaga Hill. He had a bullet hole in his left side and a bag containing two shovels wrapped in old carpet (to muffle digging noises). The doctor also had a satchel filled with a bottle of whisky, a hook, a rope, a lantern, and a screwdriver. In addition, Dr. K. carried a dirk and two revolvers in his belt. The obvious conclusion is that he went to the poorhouse cemetery in the dark of night to procure fishing worms.
Had the doctor been assassinated by someone who resented his attempt to grab a medical specimen from the potter's field? Perhaps, but wagon tracks near the body suggested that Dr. K. had a run-in with a rival gang of body snatchers. In any case, the good doctor's wounds were fatal, so the expedition was the last time he tried to pilfer a pauper.
* * *
Some spoilsports objected so strongly to having their relatives' graves robbed that there was a thriving industry in planting booby traps along with bodies. In 1896, a "coffin torpedo" was patented. It was exactly what the name implies. If the unwary body snatcher tried to pry open the coffin lid, a spring would strike a percussion cap and explode a bomb that would send singed parts of the snatcher high into the air — and probably bits of coffin wood, tools, dirt, and chunks of the dearly departed too. Presumably workmen, coroners, undertakers, and the like were alerted beforehand if a coffin had to be exhumed for some legitimate reason. At least one celebrity shared her grave with planted explosives: Edith Whitney, wife of millionaire and former Secretary of the Navy William C. Whitney, who was buried in Zion Cemetery, Douglaston, Long Island, in May 1899. The New York Herald said the bombs were designed so that "their explosive force [would be] directed upward and to either side." Mrs. Whitney was later dug up, one assumes very carefully, and moved to Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, DC.
I have been unable to find any documented cases of body snatchers being rent asunder by buried bombs, so perhaps the devices were effective deterrents.
* * *
Circa 1896, an inventor developed a veritable Chinese puzzle of a vault in which to place caskets. Its selling point was that it had difficult catches inside, so even if body snatchers unearthed the vault and hauled it away, they would be unable to get the prize within.
Sally Surprises the Shovel Men
Sally J. of the town of Whitehall, on the New York-Vermont border, died around 1850 and was buried in the old cemetery. Twenty-three years later, in October 1873, workers excavated the remains of Mrs. J. to transport her to the new burying ground. To their everlasting wonder, the casket and shroud had long since disintegrated, but the body itself was in superb shape. Her limbs were lifelike and resting at her sides; her fingers and toes were in fine condition, including the nails; her face looked natural except that her eyes, hair, and the tip of her nose were missing. Onlookers noticed an indentation across Mrs. J.'s chest where the bottom of the coffin lid had lain.
Obsequies for the Obese
Elizabeth C. of Fleming was five feet one inch tall at the time of her death in February 1879 but weighed over three hundred pounds. As one might imagine, her dimensions caused the undertakers some trouble. They had to produce a coffin six feet long, nearly three feet wide, and twenty-one inches deep, supported with iron braces. Wrote a reporter, "It would easily have accommodated six persons by placing them one upon another, three abreast." Of course, the outer box intended to contain the gargantuan coffin had to be even larger. The coffin was too big to be brought into the house, so Mrs. C. had to be carried outside and placed in it. The reporter quoted above said her grave resembled "a miniature chasm."
The Miracle Face
An article that made the rounds of America's newspapers in October 1895 reports on a "miracle face" that had appeared on the back of a large marble shaft in Oak Hill Cemetery at Stony Brook, Long Island. The face was not the work of a sculptor, but rather had appeared naturally, "formed by a peculiar grouping of the clouded veins and dark spots characteristic of first-class imported stone." The "face" was roughly the size of a human countenance and was indistinct when viewed closely, but "at a distance of from thirty-five to fifty feet it is as plain as though done with an artist's brush." The face had hair, eyes, a nose, cheeks, a mouth, and a chin, and appeared to be looking downward at the grave of the person for whom the monument was built. Unfortunately, the report did not provide the person's name, but feel free to search for it.
Spirit Son
A widower identified in the unsympathetic press in 1878 only as "a Brooklyn idiot" — and who presumably was a Spiritualist — was informed by the spirit world that if his late wife had lived a little while longer, she would have borne a son. The BI took this news so seriously that he had a monument erected to his "spirit son," whom he touchingly named Charles.
Premature Burial: New York
We moderns have medical technology that tells us when clinical death has occurred, and we also have embalming. Lucky us! But our ancestors were not so fortunate. They lived in times when medicine was in its infancy and embalming was not common. An untold number of them revived in their caskets after a hasty burial. Old wills often include stipulations that the deceased be kept aboveground until signs of decomposition set in. For example, Dr. William D. of Jersey City so feared premature burial that his will directed that a surgeon cut his radial artery, for which he was to be paid thirty dollars. The doctor passed away on October 20, 1909, and his orders were carried out.
People worried enough about the possibility of being buried alive that Edgar Allan Poe devoted a story, "The Premature Burial," to the phenomenon and began it with several instances drawn from real life. Newspapers from the era also include numerous examples — such as the following case.
Emma R. of Syracuse caught a bad cold in mid-March 1889. It settled in her lungs, and the seventeen-year-old died on March 22. Neighbors who dressed her for burial were surprised that she remained warm to the touch even four hours after she'd stopped breathing. She was buried in Geddes Cemetery on March 24. Her father, Edward — who also happened to be the cemetery sexton — dug her grave himself.
As the days passed, Edward became obsessed with the notion that Emma had been buried alive. A month after her interment, Mr. R. could stand the suspense no longer and strode to Geddes with a sense of determination and a spade in hand. Without assistance he dug up the coffin. Then he removed the lid, and this is what he saw:
The body of the young girl [was] lying turned over on one side. He says that her hands were clasped over her face and her brown hair was tangled up over her eyes, as though it had been torn in dreadful agony. Mr. R. says that there were fingermarks on her face. He said he was nearly paralyzed with terror, and hastily replaced the cover, shoveled the dirt back into the grave and ran from the place.
Mr. R. was nearly driven insane by the experience, which proves the old truism: sometimes you really don't wanna know.
* * *
In 1881, a New York City undertaker recalled his adventure when he was requested to embalm the body of a Union officer who fell in battle at Fredericksburg. When the mortician opened an artery to pump in his chemicals, he was splattered by a stream of blood that indicated the "corpse's" heart was still pumping. After medical treatment, the unnamed officer recovered, fought in two additional campaigns, and worked on a Southern railroad after the war. The undertaker remarked, "I met him at Washington last winter and spoke about the matter, but all he would say was that he had many close shaves in battle, but that one beat them all."
* * *
Elderly Mary C. of 4 Delhi Street, Syracuse, passed into the Great Beyond at 8:00 a.m. on August 2, 1889. Within an hour, friends and relatives were mourning at the house. Her body was washed and dressed; her limbs were cold and her eyes glazed. Around noon the mourners got the scare of their lives when the dead woman turned over on her side and asked when lunch would be served. Given that people who died in the heat of summer generally were buried in haste, Mrs. C. was fortunate indeed to have revived when she did. The papers didn't record what she had for lunch.
* * *
Walter E. died at his home at 110 Berry Street in Williamsburg, New York City, on December 13, 1889. His heart stopped beating and his face took on an ashy pallor. The undertaker showed up with the tools of his trade, including an icebox, and performed the "usual services," such as straightening out Walter's grimace. Suddenly the dead man's eyes flipped open and he said, "What are you going to do with me?" "Nothing at all," stammered the undertaker, who packed up his shroud and icebox and left, having been cheated out of his fee. A reporter noted that Walter was "highly indignant at the manner in which he has been treated."
* * *
A sadly undetailed news report from New York, datelined December 13, 1901, reads: "A 'corpse' sat up in a coffin and barely escaped burial."
Devices to Prevent Premature Burial
A journalist writing in 1895 estimated the odds of being buried alive while cataleptic to be a comforting "one in ten million." Those odds weren't good enough for many jittery persons, and inventors assuaged their fears with devices designed to rescue the prematurely buried.
For example, in that same year, the New York Herald mentioned the inventor of a "grave signal," a tube stretching from the surface of the earth to the inside of the coffin. An individual could breathe and shout through the tube; the slightest movement in the coffin would trigger a signal aboveground.
One wonders if the invention were actually tested by a brave soul willing to be planted six feet deep. Sarcastic undertakers who objected to the device suggested that the inventor try it out on himself. He countered that they hated his brainchild because it would render embalming obsolete.
The inventor wasn't particularly original; several contraptions intended to thwart live burial were patented, most having as common features the long tube reaching the surface and some means of signaling that all was not well below. One device sent up a red flag if the "corpse's" hand twitched.
The ingenious so-called grave annunciator operated like this: "A disturbance in the coffin closes an electric circuit and springs an alarm in the watch-house of the cemetery. The superintendent takes note of the number of the grave indicated by the alarm." Then, it is to be presumed, he would shout something like, "Grab the shovels, boys, and head for grave number 32, section P!"
Another device with a tube extending from the surface to the casket had an interesting variation on the usual idea. The tube was open at the coffin end and sealed at the top, but if the occupant woke up, a spring catch opened the tube end that was on the surface — thus allowing oxygen in but trapping the stink if the inhumed one actually were dead. At the same time, the device set off an alarm bell if necessary.
Some opted to have a glass case placed on the grave, with wires within that reached the presumed corpse below. If the body moved, needles indicated so in the glass case — and then the victim of premature burial had only to pray that some passerby would happen to notice that the needle had moved.
For those who liked jewelry, one patented invention featured a ring placed on the corpse. Movement of the hand caused a clockwork gadget to set off an alarm and turn on a fan, which forced air down a tube. A second tube provided a lamp and a mirror. Folks on the surface could look down the tube and enjoy the frightened expression on the person below, as reflected in the mirror, and then provide help if they had nothing else to do.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "New England Nightmares"
by .
Copyright © 2018 Keven D. McQueen.
Excerpted by permission of Indiana University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
1. Nefarious New York2. Nightmarish New Jersey3. Vermont Vagaries4. Recondite Rhode Island5. Creepy Connecticut6. Morbid Maine7. Dreadful Delaware8. Macabre Massachusetts9. Numinous New Hampshire10. Peculiar PennsylvaniaWhat People are Saying About This
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From the moment I picked up Keven McQueen's new book I couldn't put it down. As always, he's the master of combining wit and history for a very enjoyable read.
"From the moment I picked up Keven McQueen's new book I couldn't put it down. As always, he's the master of combining wit and history for a very enjoyable read.