Daughter, Doctor, Resurrectionist by Edmund Michael Van Buskirk

Author:Edmund Michael Van Buskirk [Van Buskirk, Edmund Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Medical/Medical History & Records/History/United States/19th Century/State & Local/Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI)
Publisher: White River Press
Published: 2019-11-05T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 9. Justice of the Peace Daniel Ryan’s ramshackle courtroom, lower right corner. Reproduced with the permission of the Allen County-Fort Wayne Historical Society.

Justice Ryan first called the bereaved Mrs. Charles Wright to the witness stand in his little courtroom. Mary Wright affirmed that she was the widow of Charles Wright who had been buried at Lindenwood Cemetery on November 22. Mrs. Wright believed that her husband had died from abscesses of his head and neck. He had been ill for some time and had been attended by Dr. Gregg and Dr. Woodworth. She described her husband as having been a very tall man, forty-five years of age. She added that he was extremely thin, a condition that had been exacerbated by his prolonged illness. She then described her husband’s grave on the gentle slope in the southern area of Lindenwood Cemetery. The defense chose not to cross-examine her.

Next, the venerable Dr. Benjamin Woodworth made his way through the crowd to Ryan’s witness-box. Woodworth confirmed the widow’s statement that her husband had been afflicted with abscesses of his head and neck, that he was tall, and that his body was so emaciated that it should have been of little value for dissection. He failed to elaborate upon the notion that, in November 1877, the fledgling medical college had been so desperate to provide cadavers to their students that just about any body, regardless of its condition, would no doubt have suited their purposes.

John Doswell, the beleaguered superintendent of Lindenwood Cemetery, testified that his staff was only too aware of the problem of stealing bodies from new graves in the Fort Wayne area. Lindenwood’s position, elevated perhaps above many of the local graveyards, offered a modicum of protection, but clearly not enough. Although the grounds already imbued a pastoral sanctity for the living as well as the dead, Doswell’s employees had continued to take more practical precautions to protect their graves. He said that, as far as he knew, Lindenwood had been spared the sorts of desecrations that had plagued other smaller graveyards, but the staff understood the temerity and desperation of the local resurrection men. They knew that it was unrealistic to expect that the cemetery was entirely safe. Doswell then described for the court the unique imprint known only to him and the sexton that they impressed upon the soil of each new grave as a mark to assure its security. He added that he had established a routine of personally examining each new grave every morning for “several days” after an interment to ascertain that neither the mark nor the grave had been disturbed.

John Doswell went on to tell the court that he had arisen early on November 23 because he had been worried about Charles Wright’s grave. He, too, had seen the suspicious-looking men lurking around during the interment service on November 22. When he made his rounds the next morning, he discovered that the mark had been subtly, but definitely, altered. It could have been from

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