Sawbones: A Marital Tour of Misguided Medicine - Sawbones: William Cunningham and the Ghouls of Cincinnati

Episode Date: February 24, 2020

We love grave robbers on Sawbones and ... well, that came out wrong. We don't have a particular affinity for today's grave robbers, but they've played an important role in medical research and ... we're still defending grave robbers, aren't we? OK, listen. Let's start over. This is an episode about a really bad grave robber.Music: "Medicines" by The Taxpayers

So, bones is a show about medical history, and nothing the hosts say should be taken as medical advice or opinion. It's for fun. Can't you just have fun for an hour and not try to diagnose your mystery boil? We think you've earned it. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. You're worth it. Enjoy a moment of distraction from that weird growth. Your worth. Tick, tick, tick, tick. All right. The time is about to books. One, two, one, and welcome to Saul Bones, a Marlotur of Miss Guided Medicine.

I'm your co-host Justin McElroy. And I'm Sydney McAroy. I'd expect that from you since a netting. It's so great to be back. Yeah. We were just here seven months ago. You all came back. You're really nice. Thank you.

I did a French tuck today just for you all. Just for Cincinnati. No love the French tuck. Tan is here, right? Welcome to. I assume. I'm going to be back. I'm going to be back. for you all just for Cincinnati. No love the French tuck Tan is tan France is here right welcome to tan is usually at our shows I assume Welcome to the very first show of the

20 funny Fill your life with laughter and love tour As you can see we have tasteful stage decor. Uh, and- Are those considered primitives? They're primitives. It's a primitive look. Those are those stores. Yeah, the stores.

That's what they're called. In the case, people are like, what are you talking about? Yeah, we are well-accustomed to primitives. We live in West Virginia. Yeah. Primitives in more ways than one. No. Come on.

I'm just having some fun. I live there. It's OK. You could begin the podcast now. You know what we're talking about, I don't. Well, I know, but you had a whole thing you were going to say. Oh, I thought you were going to say the thing. No, you were going to say.

You know since the nanny. We took a break. There's a break from touring. It's not a show. Yeah, listen, Cincinnati. You got a lot of very impressive firsts, especially in medicine. We were looking like what's a good medical topic for the first heart lung machine, right, from Cincinnati. Allow the first heart transplant. First Jewish hospital right here, Cincinnati. But also Cincinnati, y'all get nasty. So if you can guess which one we're going to speak on tonight, that's correct, it is the third, it is the final one. It's not get a, again, we're gonna leave that alone.

No, not another. We did that last time. Yeah. No, I started looking into the history of Cincinnati and what medically was relevant, what was interesting, what would you wanna know? And I kept stumbling upon something that we've covered on the show before,

but in greater depth, which is that Cincinnati is a rich history Grave robbing. We love it. Two things from us. Archilly and Grave robbing. That's Cincinnati. I usually, so I title my outlines for our shows. Just something for me to like know what I'm searching for

in my own Google Docs, like not for anybody else. So I usually don't share the titles but the titles I've been using for our shows, just something for me to like know what I'm searching for and my own Google Docs, like not for anybody else. So I usually don't share the titles, but the title of this one was so good. I felt like I had to say it before I started the show. So we're going to talk about William Cunningham and the Goals of Cincinnati, which is a great band if your name is William Cunningham. Sure.

So if you're here William Cunningham, you can have that, that's yours. Also, put the bodies back, next day, and be dead again, because you came back to life I'm assuming. For a good bit of history, when we've talked about this before, but you weren't allowed to dissect cadavers the way we do now in medical schools to learn about anatomy, to understand the human body so that you could, you know, like take care of it and try to keep other human bodies still alive.

And that was a huge problem for medical schools because how are you supposed to do the right thing for somebody if you have no idea what their Gucci bits are inside there, you're just kind of guessing, you're looking at pictures, some of them are wrong, some of them are right, and there were very limited opportunities, even when it was legal to dissect somebody, it was usually that somebody committed a crime

that was considered so bad in the eyes of the law that they would not only sentence you to death, but they would sentence you to dissection. And so there were very rare opportunities where the court system was like, here you go. This is one you can have. They're really bad. They were so bad.

The big problem with that is all their hearts are three sizes too small. So that's going to give the doctors a misunderstanding of the size of the heart. In those cases. Do you remember the Grinch murdered those people? I was weird. It was implying, I guess. And then, I mean, I guess what you're saying is then, after that, he was put to death and dissected by medical student. Medical student, who's?

I guess, yeah, they would be the who's doing the dissection of the Grinch. There's not other grinches around, so I guess, yes, Sid, if you want to get dark, the who's down in Whoville would have to carve the roast beef? Carve the roast beef, if you'll forgive the expression. Okay, there were no grrenches involved in this story originally.

I don't know. There were no grinches involved in this story originally. I don't know. So, if you weren't lucky enough to be at a school where a dissection, where an actual human cadaver was and you could witness a dissection, it usually was pretty crowded. If you were a young medical student, you weren't going to get the opportunity to actually do anything. They might be done in a big theater where like the boss has got to do stuff and you just got to kind of crowd around and like try to take notes.

So it was not great for medical education. So it put physicians and people training to become physicians in this really bad situation where it's not like they knew where they were bodies. They knew where they were. And they knew how to get them. It just wasn't legal. And so at this point in history, doctors got a really bad rap and especially medical students

for going and robbing fresh graves for cadavers so that they could do their anatomical dissections and learn about the human body. So they had a good goal, but a very bad way of going about it. And so for a while, it really was the doctors and students themselves who were doing this, which really added to the mistrust of the public.

Like doctors were not popular, not that like we're super popular now, but they really weren't popular at that point because it's like no I know what you do. I don't want you touching me. You rob graves. And so they were like well we need to outsource. We don't want to be doing this ourselves because it's not a great look. We need people who are willing to do this for a price. And that is where the resurrection men or resurrectionists, as they were known, came into the picture. And these were just people who were like, yeah, I mean, you pay me the right amount. And I'll go dig up a fresh grave.

Just shut up, everybody. Yeah, no questions asked. And like, it became a very lucrative profession, and a very involved profession, where if you were gonna get a body, you had to get one that was pretty newly, you know, dead, for it to still be dissectable and learn things. And you had to have like a method of doing it really quickly, and you would even do things like if you were going to set your price, there were different prices based on how much learning you might get from that cadaver.

So they would send people to the funerals as fake mourners. Nice. To case the joint. And gather info, they would even send supposed grieving widows to the poor houses to claim like John Does that nobody knew who they were and be like, that's definitely my husband. And so it was a very... Whoa, that's a chance. It was a very involved profession.

They could charge in their dollars up to $80 for a cadaver, which would be like about $2,000. Now. So I mean, you could make a lot of money doing this. Oh, hey. Oh, quick time out. Quick pause. Now, at this point, I'm standing up from the table to remove some very precious, a failure

life with laughter and love signs that our dear friend Paul had lovingly placed in the front of the stage and obscured the view of some of our beloved audience members. So I'm standing up to rectify the situation. A few people's view of the goods were being obscured. Get your full ticket price, my friends. My beautiful friends, I'm beholding for the first time,

now that our signage has moved. Paul, I was right about the signs, Paul. Write it down in your notebook. My friend, Justin was dear diary. My friend, Justin was right, the signs blocked their view. But luckily, Justin saved my show. What a hero, sorry, I said, go on now that the view is no longer obscure by our signage.

Continue your tale and your full visual splendor for the first row. Thank you. Thanks. You are, of course, welcome. So you may be wondering, where were the cops? Why didn't anybody? Yes, where were the cops when Paul said the signs were okay there?

Sydney, the man should be in prison. We were all wondering again. We're also where the cops went on the grave robbing was happening. And the problem is that there was this kind of this conflict among like the judicial system, the court system, and the legal system, like, we kind of understand why the medical schools need bodies. Like, we get it.

We understand what they're trying to do. It's not nefarious. They just, they need to understand how the human body works. And we get it, but at the same time, this is illegal, and this is not the way you should go about this. This is wrong. So the penalties were actually not that bad.

It was just like a small fine, if you got caught. Which I know, it seems like it should be way worse. And they kind of, you know, just didn't like pay attention to it intentionally, because it just wasn't. It wasn't, I don't want to mess with this. It's not worth our time in trouble and it might be okay. So a lot of families took to trying to protect their loved ones on their own. And it could be as simple as just like, I'm just going to stay graveside for the first few weeks to protect the grave. There was actually a patent at the time on a coffin torpedo, which was like a spring loaded bomb in the coffin that was loaded once you shut the lid.

And so if anybody tried to open it, it would just like, you know, explode. That's actually my favorite scene in home alone. It's weird that they stole it or that. But these deterrence weren't working. There was too much money in the game, and people wanted that money. And so by the time we get to the mid 1800s into the late 1800s, there were tons and tons of people,

like resurrectionists in this line of work. And it only grew as there were more and tons of people, like, resurrectionists in this line of work. And it only grew as there were more medical schools. And by the mid-1800s, Cincinnati had five established, like, certified actual real-deal medical schools. And then about eight more sort of Lucy Goosey kind of, like, what? Like fun ones. What? We'll take you in and we'll get you a degree eventually Lucy Goosey kind of like like fun ones

We'll take you in and we'll get you a degree eventually if you have enough money, but like Anyway, there was a huge demand in Cincinnati specifically because of so many medical students so many physicians in training We need bodies to dissect and so you needed a resurrection man who could supply. And that's where we meet William Cunningham. The history of William Cunningham is a little, we're not sure. We think he was born sometime around 1807 in Ireland, and then he came over to the US at some point. But we really don't know what he was up to until he started his, what would make him infamous, his grave robbing. He was noted to be kind of like a tough, surly guy.

He liked to drink whiskey. Him and his wife Mary even would kind of work together on these jobs. She was also noted to be like, a tough lady, who liked whiskey. That was kind of there. That was the main thing. As you read, what did people know about them? They were really tough. They liked whiskey? That was kind of there. That was the main thing is you read like what did people know about them? They're like they were really tough. They liked whiskey.

So if you've always imagined grave robbers as Gentile Sardar Burscher bubble When he was he was described in 1870 people talked about He had a ponderous yet gaunt frame, a villainous bold head. A strong marked face with age and crime, a canine mouth, from the corners of which slowly trickled the generous saliva, impregnated with the juices of nicotine. He had one leg that was broken and had been shot and was like full of buckshot.

And so he always kind of like limped on the one leg that was broken and had been shot and was like full of buckshot and so we always kind of like limped on the one leg which made it all impressive that he was very good at his job. He moved very quickly. And when you would ask him as he was asked in his census like, what do you do for a job? He would tell people I drive an express wagon. Yeah, which is kind of true. It's true.

It didn't say it was in it. Oh, yeah, it had to be expressed once you loaded your cargo He was said to have exhumed up to a hundred bodies a year Whoa of his career He was yes He was very bad individual people that weren't putting that many into the ground in the kitchen here and And especially this was a lot considering that there was only a specific time of the year that you would do this.

You didn't want to be in this business during the summer, so it was really just like October and November. That was it. Those were the time, and that was actually the time of the year when medical schools would be like, now we will start the dissection lesson. The thermostat is dropping, so it's time to get some bodies. Who wins the Denali, this is when we do dissection. And he also, he only charged about $30,

as opposed to like the high-end 80s, so I guess he also offered you a deal. Sure. Well, he's doing quantity. That's the profits right there. The medicines, the medicines, the estimate my God for the mouth. The medicine, the medicine, the estimate my God for the mouth. He was very bold in his grave robbing.

And this, of course, resulted in a lot of stories, you know, myths, legends, true, somewhat true, that have arisen about William Cunningham, who was also known. So at the time, resurrectionists were also called ghouls. So you may also just be called a ghoul. Well, he was known as the ghoul. If he said the ghoul, you only met one guy. He also went by the name Old Man Dead.

Good. And that, that you would use that actually, it was very common at the time in Cincinnati, like if you were raising young children and they were misbehaving. Yes. To raise the specter of Old Man Dead, like you better watch out or old man dead. We'll get you. It's a gruesome time. And then sometimes they would just call him old cunny.

No. Don't Cincinnati. One of the stories, I'm going to tell you a few stories about him. One of the stories that I liked is that at one point he was in the cemetery, mid grave robbing expedition, he always had like some people helping him out. He didn't work completely alone, he was the boss, but he always had some guys working with him. But he was the middle of robbing a grave when the authorities showed up and were like,

come on, we're taking the end. You can't do this. Come on. We caught you. This is a pain, but we got to take you in. And everybody else like I'm scondered. They all like took off, except for cunning Hammy. He was like, OK, boys, you got me.

Yeah, I get it. On our way to jail, though, do you want to drink? You want to, there's like a pub right there. Do you want to stop for a quick drink before we go? And the cops are like, no, okay, yeah. Yeah, we do. We're bad cops, sure. So they all went to the bar and they had a few drinks

and relaxed. And after a while, they were like, we really don't want to bother taking the end. We just promise this, like don't do this again. Just promise, please, Bill, please, oh man, did. Don't do this anymore. You got it, I'm going to learn carpentry. And whatever he said, convinced them

that he had turned over to Leif and was not going to do this anymore. And so they said, goodbye. They let him go on his way. Of course, he returned immediately back to the graveyard, finished his work. He went like, round the block. And sold a body. There was another tale where Cunningham was, he got a body and he was delivering it to one of the medical schools And he had to like go through the city through like busy streets and while it was nighttime There were still a lot of people out and about you know partying having a good time and so What he did was he dressed the body in some new clothes

And put it up in the wagon with him like with his The real weekend at Burys? He told it, yes. Yeah. Yeah. He completely weakened it, burning the guy. Another Cincinnati first. Yeah.

So he got him all up right. Got his shoes on him and everything. And they started riding down the street. And every time the guy would kind of slump over or fall, he'd straighten him up and he would yell something like, sit up, this is the last time by God I'll ever take you home when you get drunk. You ought to be ashamed of yourself with a wife and children to support and just yell this stuff and everybody just thought like, uh, look at that nice friend. You know, he may rob graves professionally but he's a sweet person.

There is another story about Cunningham where he, so the easiest kind of business to be in if you're aist, was, you know, local, like shop local. And that was how he usually did things to just the medical schools in town, but because he was so good at what he did, he got a reputation that expanded beyond Cincinnati. And so physicians from outside the area

who needed to train medical students or who needed to learn something themselves, who's kind of like a self-taught era, would reach out to him and be like, can you somehow get me a cadaver? Is that possible? And apparently he said, yeah, sure, maybe. Okay, I'll figure it out. So at one point, he went to American Express, where you could ship things at one point, he went to American Express, where you could ship things at the time, it was in a credit card. And he had a big box that was marked glass,

handle with care. And he brought the box and addressed it to a doctor hearty in Leavenworth, Kansas. And he said, now I want this. I want you to take this box, collect on delivery. I'm going to need 30 bucks when they get it. And apparently, after he left, the employee in American Express was like, hmm, something feels wrong.

That was old man dead. And I don't feel good about any of this. And we haven't invented glass yet. So he opened the box. Yeah. Do you want to know what's in it? Is it a body? What's in the box? What's in the box? Do you want to know what's in the box? So there was a cadaver in the box. Yeah, we also that coming. So the way they handled this. Although I can imagine by the time it got there, someone would be like, you know what, this

is pretty stinky glass. Something's wrong. So the way they handled this is the person who opened the box sent one of like their porters out. I was like, go talk to this guy and tell him like we know there's somebody. And tell him we don't want to deal with it. And that's exactly it.

So this porter shows up and Cunningham's like out in his barn and he goes and finds him and he's like, hey, we opened your box. It's not glass. And Cunningham's just like, did, we opened your box. It's not glass. And Cunningham's just like, did you call the cops, man? Really? And they're like, no, don't worry.

We're not gonna do that. We just don't wanna deal with it. So will you come get it, please? And he was like, fine, fine. And then he tells them, but you know, I've already shipped 100 hundred people this way. Whoa! So it really isn't that big of a deal, but fine, just please don't call the cops.

And apparently at the time, they're like, no problem. He was known as someone who was not to be cross, not to be messed with. He was like a tough guy. And some of the stories that again, you know, how this kind of mythology spreads, was it true or not, but he wants when some medical students had kind of cheated him out of some money that he felt he was due. He gave them a cadaver that had died of smallpox. Whoa. So it was not somebody to be trifled with. And then sometimes, and this was not just cutting him, this was actually very common for the day,

he would sell a cadaver to a medical school and then wait until nightfall and go steal it back. And go sell it to another medical school. And then wait until nightfall and steal it back and go sell it to another medical school. And then wait until nightfall and steal it back again. And this is- Do you tell the cops? This was a very common problem that medical schools ran into where they would like have to buy the same body

like four or five times. He'd draw a little mustache on it with Sharpie. Now, Cunningham eventually met his end. I don't think he had a very healthy lifestyle. He's not a violent end. But I don't think he took very good care of himself because he died somewhere between the ages of 50 and 65. Nobody's really sure.

But it was in 1871. We know that because before he died, his last act was to preemptively sell himself. Oh, that goes down Smith. To the medical college of Ohio. And so upon his death, his wife got 50 bucks because he had already donated his body, we're sold his body, I should say, ahead of time. And Mary, as I said, his wife was a tough customer too.

She said, I know he negotiated 50. Mama neem 55. And she got it. And like all the bodies he resurrected, he was also dissected by young medical students to further their anatomical knowledge, but they didn't just bury him at the end, unlike all the other cadavers. As a tribute, I guess, depending on what you think the word tribute means. As a tribute to him, his skeleton was displayed at the medical college after the dissection was done. And it was like displayed on wires,

like propped into a sitting position. In a cabinet, like in a glass cabinet, as you walked in, you could see there was a skeleton of William Cunningham with a pipe between his teeth and a big wooden spade in his hand. Nice. Very cool. Because that's how he spent his life. I don't think he's still there. As you may imagine, this practice of resurrecting bodies eventually came to an end. The most high-profile crime associated with this actually occurred in Cincinnati. And it was when the body of a congressman from Ohio, John Scott Harrison, who was in fact the son of president William

Henry Harrison, was stolen after he died. It's actually the story is that while his family was at his funeral, they noticed that the grave of a friend of their family, an Augustus Devon, the grave had been robbed. And so after the funeral, they went about getting search warrants so that they could go look for this friend because they knew he was at, everybody knew that these bodies were at medical schools. And you can read lots of stories of families like searching medical schools and like cops

searching for medical school, they knew that the medical students had them. And so they get warrants to go search for a gustous devin and as they're searching for this other man in the meantime, the congressman's body is stolen and that's who they discover. And because this gets these shocking headlines and it's such a high-profile crime, the penalties for grave robbing, become a lot worse at this point and there are a lot of riots. We've talked about this on the show before, like doctors like riots and medical schools and like to go chase down doctors. Like in the streets. I want to take a moment for poor Gus's Devin though. I doubt that fool ever had a thought.

If history remembers me for anything, I hope that my body is stolen, and that helps them find another cooler body. And that is why my name shall be repeated in the year of our Lord 2020 and a Dominic. They did find him eventually. Oh, cool. repeated in the year of our Lord 2020 and our Dominic. They did find him eventually. Oh cool, that's very chill for him, excellent.

I'm just saying. Could you have next time, if we ever do this exact episode again, could you learn like one hobby that this guy had or something, just fill out the bio a little bit? I can do that, I guess it's Devon. I'm sure filling out the bio a little bit. I can do that. Augustus Devon. I'm sure he did something. But this, because of this, it also...

Augustus Devon the fourth just walked out. I'm sorry. He didn't know. He may still be in Cincinnati. I don't know. Maybe the family. But because of this, people also realize that one, this is terrible, and we need to put a stop to it.

This is not OK. And also, we do need a way, if we're going to, as doctors started to point out, if you're going to sue me when I don't know how to do medicine, can you at least help me know how to do medicine? Which is fair, we didn't need to teach people what was inside the human body, because we had a lot of stuff wrong in the past. Yeah, which is fair. We didn't need to teach people like what was inside the human body because we had a lot of stuff wrong in the past.

Yeah, it's embarrassing. And so they also found pathways where you could legally donate your body to science and then obviously nowadays that's how we do it. There is no more grave robbing. I do not, I can tell you that I would not have gone to medical school if I thought this was part of the job description. And I hope other doctors would say the same. You would be a great robber.

That's what I'm saying I wouldn't have gone to medical school. No, you'd be a great robber instead, I mean. That seems like it would be up your, a good UCier skill set. Since it had, thank you so much much beautiful tap theater for having us here. As always thank you to Paul Savoren, thank you to TaxPage for these are some medicines as the intro non-show program. Thanks Max from Fun Network is having us a part of their podcasting family. Thank you to you for being here or listening later after the fact.

We appreciate it. So until next time, my name is Justin McRoy. I'm Sydney McRoy. And as always, don't drill a hole in your head! I'm happy for all of you.