"Skeletons by Moonlight," from the University of Cincinnati 1896 Yearbook, digitized by University of Cincinnati Archives
As we drift toward the culmination of our month-long Halloween extravaganza, every big-box retail outlet seems to offer a selection of skeletons. These osteal accouterments range from tiny 5-inch trinkets to gargantuan 10-foot behemoths.
Today’s skeletons, of course, are plastic. Our poor ancestors had to get by with the real thing. America was a huge market for authentic human skeletons back in the day. The Cincinnati Commercial Gazette [29 April 1894] noted the volume of this bone trade:
“About fifteen hundred skeletons are imported into this country every year, nearly all of them from Paris, where the art of preparing such osseus remains is understood better than anywhere else in the world. They cost forty dollars each, but one can by a nice skull for six dollars.”
The Commercial Gazette noted wryly that skeletons were considered “necessary” under the tariff regulations of the day and so entered the U.S. duty-free. Many of them ended up in Cincinnati, passing through the huge Custom House on Fifth Street. The Cincinnati Enquirer [16 August 1892] discovered a (somewhat) fresh shipment in the Custom House on its way to local dealers.
“Three dozen skeletons. Shipped from Paris to dealers in this city. Each set of bones with a history most interesting could it be revealed. That was the information gleaned from a little review of the articles received at the Custom-house yesterday. The skeletons were put up a half-dozen in a case and were very fine ones, bleached to the whiteness of snow.”
According to The Enquirer, the whitened bones were on their way to lodges, doctors, and medical students. Cincinnati had lots of medical students. The 1892 city directory listed 12 medical colleges in the city that year. One wonders how many of our local medical students could afford a top-notch Parisian skeleton. From newspaper reports, it appears that Cincinnati’s medical students had more skeletons than they knew what to do with.
For example, The Commercial Tribune [7 May 1902] reported on a sack containing the skeleton of a woman found in a vacant room at 1405 Vine Street by a young boy curious about the vile odors adhering to that place. After the bones had been deposited at the Coroner’s, an investigation revealed that they constituted the class assignment for a medical student who had left them behind when he moved out.
Similarly, in 1891, the neighbors of a large apartment building on Smith Street in the West End regularly complained about the foul odors emanating from rooms occupied by medical students. If the young men weren’t hacking up a cadaver, they were boiling the bones and, far too often, left half-cleansed skeletons in the basement.
In 1903, police in Ludlow, Kentucky, confronted a young man named Albert Hodge who was boiling the body of a woman in a huge cauldron under a railroad trestle. Hodge, 19, told police he had acquired the corpse from a Cincinnati medical college and was boiling away the flesh to clean the skeleton for study. The cops advised him to relocate his gruesome homework where it wouldn’t attract crowds.
Likewise, an employee of the B&O Express Company in Pittsburgh was appalled to discover the mutilated remains of a man in an advanced stage of decomposition stuffed into a wooden box shipped from Cincinnati and addressed to a Pittsburgh recipient. Foul play was immediately suggested, and investigators telegraphed Cincinnati police for an explanation. The mystery was solved next day, according to The Commercial Gazette [25 February 1887], by an apparently embarrassed Professor Benjamin K. Maltby, dean of Cincinnati’s American Eclectic Medical College. The bones, he asserted, belonged to a recent graduate of his college. After thoroughly dissecting the now-skeletal subject in anatomy class, the former student and newly certified Doctor John Osborne, shipped the remains to his home in Pittsburgh “for more perfect preparation for use in his office as a physician.”
It’s rare these days to find an actual human skeleton at your doctor’s office, but it was once de rigueur for every respectable physician to have an authentic skeleton hanging in a corner. A Cincinnati surgeon gave a reporter for The Penny Post [18 October 1882] the full rundown on skeletal accessories for the modern infirmary. The best specimens were procured, as noted, from Paris, with the highest quality fetching $75. American skeletons just couldn’t match the French for pristine preservation, so domestic skeletons rarely cost more than $50.
The sheer volume of French skeletons arriving in America suggested that the less said about their origin the better. A surgeon told The Penny Post that a major source for American specimens was the potter’s field, where the bodies of the indigent and unclaimed were buried. The reporter asked the surgeon if it was true that the bodies of prostitutes were more often found on dissecting tables than in graves. The surgeon replied only, “Oh, the hospitals cannot furnish enough stiffs for the medical colleges, and they have to come from somewhere.”
That “somewhere” often involved body snatchers, who pulled fresh corpses from the grave to be sold to medical schools. In Cincinnati, the most notorious of these ghouls was “Old Cunny,” William Cunningham, also known as “Old Man Dead.” Cincinnati mothers invoked his name to frighten naughty children. By 1872, in delicious irony, “Old Cunny” was nothing but a skeleton himself on view at the Medical College of Ohio. His widow sold the grave robber’s bones to the college while he lay on his deathbed. The Cincinnati Enquirer [29 September 1872] described the display:
“His ghastly skeleton, neatly articulated and wired, sits on a tombstone in the cabinet of that institution, while in his hand he grasps a spade, the emblem of his calling in life. Between his teeth he holds a short pipe as he was wont to in the days of flesh.”
And the “lodges” supplied with fine Parisian skeletons? Every Cincinnati secret society, from the Masons to the Knights of Pythias to Der Deutsche Orden der Harugari absolutely required skeletal remains for their mystic initiation ceremonies. If not an entire skeleton, at least a skull and a couple of femurs were necessary to impart the appropriately ominous atmosphere to the proceedings. Few would admit it, but fraternities at the University of Cincinnati were suspected of harboring fugitive skeletons in emulation of the adult organizations. It’s a fairly common occurrence even today to discover skeletons in old Odd Fellows lodges and similar facilities once occupied by fraternal orders.
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