USA > Pennsylvania > Jefferson County > Jefferson County, Pennsylvania : her pioneers and people, 1800-1915, Volume I > Part 49
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"E. R. BRADY, "Foreman.
"December 17, 1857. It is adjudged that there was probable cause for holding the in- quest.
"By the Court, "J. S. McCALMONT."
This coroner's verdict was supposed to have been manipulated by the Masons. It was the custom then to charge all unpopular verdicts on the Masons.
After the inquest jurors viewed the body and icehouse on Sunday evening, a rope was tied around Southerland's neck, he was
dragged into Coal alley, thrown into his coffin and reburied in the old graveyard, where lie
Hearts once pregnant with celestial fire, Hearts that the rod of empire might have swayed, Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre.
Epitaphs were common in all these old graveyards, many of them quaint and inter- esting. I here insert one observed in a New England graveyard :
Here lies the wife of Rodger McGhee. A very good wife to Rodger was she.
But who were the ghouls? As usual, stu- pidity and prejudice came to the front, and picked out for vengeance two innocent and in- offensive colored men living in the suburbs of the town. The law ordained in reverence we must hold, and so on Sunday evening Theresa Sweeney, a sister of Southerland, was sent for, and she made information against Charles Anderson and John Lewis. Cyrus Butler, Jr., a constable then in Pinecreek township, arrested forthwith these two harmless colored men and thrust them into jail. It was customary then to blame all obscure crimes on some "damned nigger." On Monday morning, the 9th, An- derson and Lewis had a hearing before Jus- tices Smith and Brady. George W. Zeigler, an able lawyer, represented the Common- wealth, but the poor negroes were without friends or a lawyer. However, as there was 110 evidence against them, they were dis- charged. The excitement was now so intense that several newly made graves were opened to see if friends had been disturbed. A few timid people placed night guards in the ceme- tery.
In commenting on this atrocity, the Jeffer- sonian said: "Taking everything into con- sideration, it was one of the most inhuman and barbarous acts ever committed in a civilized community ; and although the instigators and perpetrators may escape the punishment which their brutality demands, they cannot fail to receive the indignant frowns of an insulted community. They may evadc a prosecution through the technicalities of the law, and they may laugh it off, and when we have no assur- ance but that our bodies, or those of our friends, may be treated in the same manner, cold and hardened must be the wretch who does not feel the flame of indignation rise in his breast at the perpetration of such an of- fense. . .
"Since the above was in type and the excite- ment somewhat allayed, it is now believed by every person that the body was placed in the
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icehouse for dissection, and it is supposed that those who had the matter in charge had the key to the door and left everything safe and secure on Saturday night, and that some thief, knowing that during the warm weather butter had been placed there for protection, broke open the door and entered the place for the purpose of stealing, and on striking a light or groping around in search of butter, he came across the 'dead darkey,' and, in his haste to get away, forgot to shut the door, and we have no doubt that the fellow who broke open the door left in a hurry. This is, no doubt, the true state of the case."
All this confusion was a good thing for us guilty parties, as it gave time for the angry populace to cool off.
Who was this Henry Southerland? He was a stout, perfect specimen of physical manhood. He was a son of Charles and Susan Souther- land, nee Van Camp. Charles Southerland came here in 1812-a runaway slave. Miss Van Camp came to Port Barnett with her father, Fudge Van Camp, in 1801. Henry Southerland was born on the farm lately owned by John Hoffman. He was a North Forker, and, like the other North Fork boys. could drink, swear, wrestle, shoot, jump, pull square and raft. In the latter part of October, 1857, he took the fever and died in a few days, aged about thirty years. He was residing then on what is called the Charles Horn farm.
Dr. J. G. Simons was then living in Brook- ville, practicing medicine under his father-in- law. Dr. James Dowling. Simons was am- bitious to become a surgeon. Ile believed, like 'time, when any offender shall be convicted all intelligent doctors then, that a knowledge of anatomy was the foundation of the healing art. At that time dissection of human bodies in Pennsylvania was a crime. Mules and monkeys might be dissected, but not men. It was legal in New York State, and was made so in 1780, to dissect the bodies of executed erim- inals, and this law in New York was greatly improved in 1854. New York was the first State in the New World to legalize "the use of the dead to the living." Massachusetts in 1860 passed a local law. I here give the New York law of 1780:
An Act to prevent the odious practice of digging up and removing for the purpose of dissection, dead bodies interred in cemeteries or burial places. Passed the 16th day of January, 1789.
"Whereas the digging up dead bodies in- terred in cemeteries and burial places within
this State, and removing them for the purpose of dissection, have occasioned great discontent to many of the inhabitants of this State, and in some instances disturbed the public peace and tranquility ;
"To prevent such odious practices in future. Be it enacted by the people of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assem- bly, and it is hereby enacted by the authority of the same, That any person who shall at any time hereafter, for the purpose of dissection or with 'intent to dissect, dig up, remove or carry away, or be aiding or assisting in ‹ligging up. removing or carrying away any dead human body, which shall have been interred in any cemetery or burial place. within this State, or shall dissect, or aid, abet or assist in dissecting such human body, and shall be convicted of any of the said of- fenses in the Supreme court, or in any court of oyer and terminer, gaol delivery, or court of general session of the peace, 'shall be ad- judged to stand in the pillory: or to suffer other corporal punishment (not extending to life or limb ) ; and shall also pay such fine, and suffer such imprisonment, as court before whom such conviction was held, shall in their discretion, think proper to direct.'
"And in order that science may not in this respect be injured by preventing the dissection of proper subjects,
"Be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, That the justices of the Supreme court, or of any court of oyer and terminer. or gaol delivery, in this State, from time to
before them or either of them, of murder. arson or burglary, for which he or she shall be sentenced to suffer death, may at their di- rection, add to the judgment, that the body of such offender shall be delivered to a surgeon for dissection ; and the sheriff who is to cause such sentence to be executed, shall accordingly deliver the body of such offender, after execu- tion done, to such surgeon as such court shall direct, for the purpose aforesaid. PRO- VIDED ALWAYS that such surgeon, or some other person by him appointed for the pur- pose shall attend to, receive and take away the dead body. at the time of the execution of such offender.'
The first legislation in Pennsylvania looking toward legalized dissection locally was in 1867. \ member of the House introduced a local law to apply to the counties of Philadelphia and Allegheny, viz., No. 482: An act for the promotion of medical science, and to prevent the traffic in human bodies, in the city of
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Philadelphia and the county of Allegheny. This law passed finally and was approved by John W. Geary on the 18th day of March, 1867.
This law of 1867 was incepted by the Phila- delphia College of Physicians, manipulated and pushed in and through the Legislature by a committee of that body consisting of Drs. D. Hayes, Agnew. S. D. Gross, Henry Harts- horn and others. This law was called the Armstrong Act. Of the members and senators at that time who deserve special notice for services rendered, I mention Dr. Wilmer Worthington, then a senator from Chester county. This local "Anatomy Act" of March 18, 1867, read as follows :
"Any public officer in the city of Philadel- phia and county of Allegheny, having charge thereof, or control over the same, shall give permission to any physician or surgeon of the same city and county, upon his request made therefor, to take the bodies of deceased per- sons, required to be buried at the public ex- pense, to be by him used, within the State, for the advancement of medical science, pref- erence being given to medical schools, public and private, and said bodies to be distributed to and among the same equitably, the number assigned to each being proportioned to that of its students: Provided, however, that if the deceased person, during his or her last sick- ness, of his or her own accord, shall request to be buried, or if any person, claiming to be, and satisfying the proper attthorities that he is, of kindred to the deceased, shall ask to have the body for burial. it shall be surrendered for interment ; or if such deceased person was a stranger or traveler, who died suddenly, the body shall be buried, and shall not be handed over as aforesaid.
"Every physician or surgeon, before re- ceiving such dead body, shall give to the proper authorities, surrendering the same to him a sufficient bond that each body shall be used only for the promotion of medical science within this State; and whosoever shall use such body or bodies for any other purpose. or shall remove the same beyond the limits of this State, and whosoever shall sell or buy such body or bodies, or in any way traffic in the same, shall be deemed guilty of a mis- (lemeanor, and shall, on conviction, be im- prisoned for a term not exceeding five years at hard labor in the county jail."
More than four hundred years old is the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh, Scot- land, and when founded the sttrgeons and bar- bers of the city were united as one of the
fourteen incorporated trades of Edinburgh. On July 1, 1505, they received their charter from the town council.
The charter of the barber-surgeons was con- firmed by James IV, an early Stuart king, of great enlightenment and accomplishment, who took much interest in the progress of the sur- geons on account of the needs of his army in time of war.
In the charter permission was given to the incorporation to control the medical educa- tion of the city, such as it was in those days; of blood letting, to have the sole right of prac- tice and to put down quacks. They were to get every year the body of a criminal who had been executed to practice anatomy on, and they promised in return to do "suffrage for his soul." Of the first one hundred and fifty-eight members of the incorporation, six were surgeons to the kings of Scotland.
As society improved and medical science de- veloped, the gulf between the surgeons and barbers widened, and in 1772, as the result of a process in the court of Session, the con- nection was finally terminated. The deacon or president of the incorporation of surgeons was for more than three hundred and twenty years a member of the town council of Edin- burgh, ex officio, and several of the deacons were members of the Scottish Parliament. The great Ambrose Pare in A. D. 1545 spoke of himself as a master barber surgeon.
I take the following from the Jefferson Star of 1855:
NEW SHAVING SALOON.
A Seidler would inform the citizens of Brook- villy that he has located himself in the room above Iacob Hoffman's, opposite the Court House (where McKnight & Son's drug store now is) where he will attend to cupping, bleeding, pulling teeth, shaving and hair dressing, and respectfully request those needing his service in either of the above operations to give him a call. October 27, 1855-3m.
Galen in A. D. 165 attained some knowledge of anatomy by dissecting animals. The first dead human body dissected was in Alexandria, Egypt, three hundred years before the birth of Christ. About this time some criminals were vivisected to ascertain and locate the internal organs. Human anatomy was crudely studied in the fifteenth century in Italy.
The English law, from the time of Henry VIII ( 1509), allowed only the bodies of persons executed for murder to be dissected. The reformation of this antiquated and imperfect system took place in 1747. when Hunter es- tablished complete courses of anatomical lec-
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tures and opened a school for dissection. The practice of dissection grew so rapidly that by about 1793 there were two hundred regular anatomy students in London, while in 1823 their nuumber was computed at about one thou- sand. Of course the supply of murderers was not enough for all these students, and the very fact that legally only murderers' bodies were allowed for this purpose made people bitterly hostile to the bodies of their relations and friends being dissected. In accounting for the great aversion which there has always been to dissection in England, it should be remembered that, although capital punishment was the penalty for very many offenses at the beginning of the nineteenth century, only the bodies of murderers were handed over to the anatomists. When once the absolute neces- sity of a surgeon's having a good knowledge of anatomy was realized, bodies had to be pro- cured at any hazard, and the chief method was to dig them up as soon as possible after their burial. This practice of exhumation or "body-snatching" on a large scale was peculiar to Great Britain and America. In France. Italy, Portugal and Austria no popular objec- tion was raised to the bodies of friendless peo- pie, who died in hospitals, or of those whose burial was paid for by the state, being dis- seeted, provided a proper religious service was held over them. In Germany it was obligatory that the bodies of all people unable to pay for their burials, all dying in prisons, all suicides and public women should be given up. In all these countries the supply was most ample and body-snatching was unknown.
In Great Britain early exhumations seem to have caused very little popular concern : Hunter, it is said, could manage to get the body of any person he wanted, were it that of giant, dwarf, hunchback or lord, but later, when the number of students increased very rapidly, the trade of "resurrection man" at- tracted the lowest dregs of the vicious classes. It is computed that in 1828 about two hundred people were engaged in it in London. In the first half of the eighteenth century, and for some time afterwards, the few dissections which were undertaken were carried out in the private houses of medical men. In 1702 a rule was passed at St. Thomas's Hospital pre- venting the surgeons or pupils from dissect- ing bodies there without the express permis- sion of the treasurer, but by 1780 this rule seems to have lapsed, and a definite dissect- ing-room was established. an example which was soon followed by Guy's and St. Bartholo- mew's. In the early years of the nineteenth
century the number of students increased so rapidly that a good many private anatomy schools grew up. These schools needed and obtained nearly eight hundred bodies a year in the years about 1823, when there were nearly one thousand students in London, and it is recorded that bodies were even sent to Edinburgh and Oxford.
When it is realized that the greater num- ber of these bodies were exhumed, it is easy to understand how hostile the public feeling became to the body-snatchers or "resurrection men," and also to the teachers of anatomy and medical students. This was increased by the fact that it soon became well known that many of the so-called "resurrection men" only used their calling as a cloak for robbery, be- cause, if they were stopped with a horse and cart by the watch at night, the presence of a body on the top of stolen goods was suffi- cient to avert search. So emboldened and careless did these body-snatchers become, and so great was the demand for bodies, that they no longer confined themselves to pauper graves, but took the remains of the wealthier classes, who were in a position to resent it more effectually : often they did not even take the trouble to fill in the graves after rifling their contents, and, in consequence, many sextons, who no doubt had been bribed, lost their posts, and men armed with firearms watched the London burial places at night. The result of this was that the "resurrection men" had to go farther afield, and their oc- cupation was attended with considerable dan- ger, so that the price of a body gradually rose from ten dollars to about thirty-five dollars, which seems the maximum ever paid.
England passed the Warburton Act July 19, 1832, three years after the conviction of Burke in Edinburgh, Scotland, who at this trial confessed that he killed fifteen people to sup- ply medical colleges with dissecting material at two dollars and sixty-six and two-thirds cents for each body. Dr. Thomas Cadwalader dissected the first human body in Pennsyl- vania in 1730, and performed the first post- mortem examination in 1742. The first sub- ject dissected in Jefferson county was in Brookville, in the winter of 1853-54, by Dr. George Watt, Dr. MeClay, Samuel C. Arthurs, and a student, G. W. Burkett, now a doctor in Tyrone City, Pa. This subject was stolen from a graveyard in Clarion county, Pa. He was an Irishman who froze to death. He drank too much water in his whiskey.
Ambition is something like love-laughs at law and takes fearful risks. The death of
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MRS. MARY (MeKNIGHT) TEMPLETON
MY MOTHER Who ran to hehe me when I fell, And would some pretty story tell. Or kiss the place to make it well? My mother !
And can I ever crase to be Affectionate and kind to thee, Who wast so very kind to me? My mother!
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Southerland, Simons thought, was a good chance for a subject and a surgical school to advance himself and assist the rest of us. On the day of Southerland's death Dr. Simons visited separately each of the following doc- tors in the town, and appointed a meeting to be held on Saturday night, October 31st, at ten o'clock, in K. L. Blood's drug store, for the purpose of organizing and resurrecting the dead negro: Drs. J. G. Simons, John Dowling, Hugh Dowling, A. P. Heichhold and W. J. McKnight. By request, I secured, on Friday, October 30th, permission from Dr. Clarke to use for our school the empty house then owned by him, and where Mrs. Ada M. Means now lives. Augustus Bell, an edu- cated gentleman from Philadelphia, who lived and died here, and K. L. Blood, both med- ically inclined, were taken in as friends. Promptly at ten o'clock on Saturday night, October 31, 1857, all these parties met in council in the drug store. Simons, the two Dowlings and "Little Bell" filled themselves full to the brim with Monongahela whiskey. Blood, Heichhold and McKnight remained dry and took not a drop. At about eleven o'clock p. m. we all marched up Pickering street, with a mattock, shovel and rope. John Dow- ling and I were quite young men and were stationed as watchers or guards. The others were to resurrect. Simons and Little Bell worked like bees, and were as brave as lions as long as the whiskey stimulated them; but when that died out they kicked and balked badly. Mr. Blood then took hold like a hero. He dug, shoveled, broke open the coffin, and there, down there in the earth's cold breast, placed the rope around the subject and assisted in the resurrection of Southerland. Remem- ber this :
It was a calm, still night, And the moon's pale light Shone soft o'er hill and dale,
when we, seven ghouls, stood around the empty tonib of Henry Southerland. The grave was then hastily filled, and carefully too. The naked corpse was now placed on a bier. John Dowling and I took one side, K. L. Blood and Simons the other, and under the full autumn moon we left the graveyard; down Barnett street, across Coal alley, across Jefferson street, down to Cherry alley, at the rear of the lot now owned by Mrs. Ada M. Means, and down that lot to the kitchen part of the house, into which the body was carried and placed in a little bedroom west and south of the kitchen. This was done between the hours of one and
two a. m., unobserved. Tired and weary, we all went home to rest, and expected to open the school on Monday night, the 2d, but for reasons I will give you farther on this was not done.
On the evening of tlie 2d of November, 1857, my mother called me to one side and said: "You have gotten yourself into trouble. You have been out nights. Don't say a word to me, just listen. You have been helping the other doctors to dig up Henry Southerland. Dr. Heichhold told Captain Wise all about it, Wise told his wife, she told Mrs. Samuel C. Arthurs, she told Mrs. Richard Arthurs, and Mrs. Richard Arthurs told me this afternoon. Now take care of yourself. As you are poor, you will have to suffer; the others are all rich and influential." As we shall see, mother was right.
This was a nitroglycerin explosion to me. I made no reply to my dear mother, but left for Blood's drug store, and repeated to him what mother had told me. His left hand went up as if struck by a Niagara electric current. I said to him, "I want Dr. Clarke protected now ; Southerland must be removed from his house." Blood agreed with me. A caucus was then called for that night at the store, when it was decided to remove the body from the house down through the cellar and secrete it under those present front steps of Mrs. Ada Means's house, and there it lay naked from Monday night until Wednesday night, when the cadaver was removed from there to Blood's icehouse, in a large coffee-sack, about nine p. m., as follows: McElhose had his printing office in a little building east and on the same lot. It was on that vacant piece next to where Corbet's house is now. It was built for and used as a drug store. There was a door upon the west side that opened into the under part of the porch and the front steps. If McElhose or any of his imps had ever opened that door, a dreadful sight would have met their startled view. I was a printer and had learned the art in part with Mc- Elhose, and I was detailed to go into his office and make all kinds of noises to detract the attention of the printers from any sounds under the porch. This I did by dancing, kick- ing over furniture, etc. I could hear the other parties at times, but McElhose thought I was drunk, or such a fool that he only watched and heard me. Everything worked favorably, and "Black Hen" was successfully removed to a house whose inside walls were frigid and white. In the icy air of night the school for dissection was opened on Wednesday and
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closed on Saturday morning. As our secret was known to so many, and realizing that we could not dissect in Brookville without being caught up, we skinned the cadaver only to pre- vent identification and for our personal safety.
At this time Brookville was full of bur- glars, thieves and housebreakers. On Friday night, the 6th. A. B. Alelain was patroling for robbers in Coal alley, and under the ebon vault of heaven, studded with stars unutter- ably bright, he espied what he thought to be
Dr. Simons and we other four doctors skinned Henry Southerland. For us to dissect Souther- land would have required about fifteen to twenty days, as dissection is a slow and intricate work, and to avoid discovery and arrest efforts were made to remove as early as possible the subject from town. Dr. David Ralston, then practicing medicine in Reynolds- ville, was seen, and he agreed to come after the cadaver and take it home on Saturday night, the 7th. Dr. W. H. Reynolds, who
JOIIN J. YPSILANTI THOMPSON
three suspicious persons, and pounced down on them like a hawk on a chicken. The sus- pects proved to be Drs. Hugh Dowling, Heich- hold and "Little Bel " ( Augustus Bell). Mc- Lain was then taken a prisoner by the sus- pects, dumped into the icchouse, and for the first time in his life saw a man skinned. The job was completed that night, and the cuticle, toes, fingers and bowels were buried under a large rock in the Dark Hollow on Saturday forenoon by Drs. Heichhold and John Dow- ling.
For dissection the cadaver is divided into five parts: The head is given to one party, the right arm and side to another, the left arm and side to a third person, the right leg to a fourth, and the left leg to a fifth. In this way
in 1898 was still residing at Prescottville, this county, was then a young man, living on a farm near Rathmel, and Dr. Ralston secured his cooperation. On Saturday these two gentlemen came to Brookville in a wagon with two mules, and stopped at the American hotel, Hon. J. J. Y. Thompson, proprietor. At a conference of all parties it was arranged that Ralston and Reynolds should drive to the icchouse from the west end of Coal alley about cleven o'clock p. m. They had a large store box in the wagon to carry the corpse. The night was black dark. At ten p. m. J. Y. said, "I'll be danged to Harry, what are so many doctors loafing here to-night for?" A little later, when Ralston ordered ont the mules and wagon, Thompson was perfectly aston-
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