Abstract
This chapter examines the evidence of the postmortem use of the indigent dead of turn of the century Milwaukee, WI. In use from 1878 to 1925, the Milwaukee County Institutional Grounds cemetery received the poor, the infirm, and the institutionalized residents of Milwaukee County. The cemetery was partially excavated in 1991–1992, and 1649 burials were uncovered. Of these, 985 adult and 363 nonadults were examined for evidence of postmortem alterations. One hundred and sixty-five individuals were found to have some manner of postmortem alteration. As late nineteenth-century Wisconsin law allowed the use of the unclaimed dead for educational purposes, it is likely that several individuals in the cemetery sample were selected for dissection. However, the high frequency of solitary craniotomies suggests that while a system was in place that utilized the underclass for medical study, the common autopsy was a greater motivation for the cases of postmortem alteration viewed among the institutional cemetery.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Notes
- 1.
For example, Davidson (2007) discusses the deposition of the dissected remains of two African-American males. They were buried within the same coffin, one supine, and the other apparently prone and between the femora of the former. The second individual did not have a skull, but it is suggested that had the skull been in place, the face would have been placed on the groin of the other. To the author, this is evidence of the final indignity set upon these individuals as they were placed in what is ostensibly a sexualized position. However, the placement of one body within the legs of another may not have been a matter of flouting propriety (Davidson 2007: 206), but simply a matter of finding the best fit within the shared coffin space. Intentionality, as read through archaeological remains, is never a certainty.
- 2.
Undated manuscript on file at the offices of the Milwaukee Academy of Medicine. The Milwaukee County Medical Society was active from 1846 to 1853, only to become dormant until 1879. As this address was a history of medical societies from 1841 to 1853, it is possible that this address dates to 1879, when the society was rekindled.
References
Archival Sources
Annual report of the Coroner’s Office of Milwaukee County, 1919, 1924. [MCC].
Annual report of the Milwaukee County Health Department, 1900–1920. Crown Printing Co.
Annual report of the Milwaukee County Hospital 1880, 1890–1892, 1894, 1900, 1902–1904, 1906–1907, 1913, 1919–1925. Milwaukee: EDW Keogh Press. [MCH]
Annual report of Milwaukee County Institutions for the year ending December 31, 1916. Milwaukee: EDW Keogh Press. [MCI].
Bartlett, J. K. (n.d.). Address to the Milwaukee County Medical Society. Unpublished manuscript on file at the Milwaukee Academy of Medicine.
Register of Burials at the Milwaukee County Poor Farm
Secondary Sources
Andrews, J. (2012). Death and the dead-house in Victorian asylums: Necroscopy versus mourning at the Royal Edinburgh Asylum, c. 1832–1901. History of Psychiatry, 23, 6–26.
Angel, J. L., Kelley, J. O., Parrington, M., & Pinter, S. (1987). Life stresses of the free Black community as represented by the First African Baptist Church, Philadelphia, 1823–1841. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 74, 213–229.
Anderson, T. E. (2002). A 19th century postmortem specimen from Deal, Kent. International Journal of Osteoarchaeology, 12, 216–219.
Ashby, L. (1984). Saving the waifs: Reformers and dependent children, 1890–1917. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
Avella, S. M. (1987). Health, hospitals, and welfare: Human services in Milwaukee County. In R. M. Aderman (Ed.), Trading post to metropolis: Milwaukee County’s first 150 years (pp. 196–254). Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee County Historical Society.
Blackburn, I. W. (1892). A manual of autopsies: Designed for the use of hospitals for the insane and other public institutions. Phliadelphia, PA: P. Blakiston, Son & Co.
Blake, J. B. (1955). The development of American anatomy acts. Journal of Medical Education, 30, 431–439.
Blakely, R. L., & Harrington, J. M. (1997). Grave consequences: The opportunistic procurement of cadavers at the Medical College of Georgia. In R. L. Blakely & J. M. Harrington (Eds.), Bones in the basement: Postmortem racism in nineteenth-century medical training (pp. 162–183). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Boston, C., Witkin, A., Boyle, A., & Wilkinson, D. R. P. (2008). ‘Safe Moor’d in Greenwich Tier’ A Study of the Skeletons of Royal Navy Sailors and Marines Excavated at the Royal Hospital Greenwich. Oxford Archaeology Monograph: 5.
Box, C. R. (1910). Postmortem manual: A handbook of morbid anatomy and postmortem technique. London: J & A Churchhill.
Boylston, C. J., Knusel, C. J., & Roberts, C. A. (2000). Investigation of a Romano-British rural ritual in Bedford, England. Journal of Archaeological Sciences, 27, 241–254.
Brands, H. W. (1995). The reckless decade: America in the 1890’s. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Brickley, M., Berry, H., & Western, G. (2006). The People: Physical Anthropology. In M. Brickley, S. Buteux, J. Adams, & R. Cherrington (Eds.), St. Martin’s uncovered: Investigations in the Churchyard of St. Martin’s-in-the-Bull-Ring, Birmingham, 2001 (pp. 90–151). Oxford: Oxbow Books.
Bugaj, U., Noval, M., & Trzecieki, M. (2013). Skeletal evidence of a postmortem examination from the 18th/19th century radom, central Poland. International Journal of Paleopathology, 3, 310–314.
Buikstra, J. E., & Ubelaker, D. H. (1994). Standards for data collection from human skeletal remains. Arkansas Archaeological Survey Research Series No. 44.
Chambers, J. W. (2004). The tyranny of change: America in the progressive era, 1890–1920. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Courtwright, D. T. (2001). Violent land: Single men and social disorder from the frontier to the inner city. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Crist, T. A. J., Roberts, D. G., Pitts, R. H., McCarthy, J. P., & Parrington, M. (1997). The First African Baptist Church cemeteries: African-American mortality and trauma in antebellum Philadelphia. In D. A. Poirier & N. F. Bellantoni (Eds.), In remembrance: Archaeology and death (pp. 19–49). Wesport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.
Crossland, Z. (2009). Acts of estrangment. The postmortem making of self and other. Archaeological Dialogues, 16, 102–125.
Davidson, J. M. (2007). “Resurrection men” in Dallas: The illegal use of Black bodies as medical cadavers (1900–1907). International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 11, 193–220.
DeWitte, S. N. (2015). Bioarchaeology and the ethics of research using human skeletal remains. History Compass, 13, 10–19.
Diner, S. J. (1998). A very different age: Americans of the progressive era. New York, NY: Hill and Wang.
Dougherty, S. P. (2011). Broken bones, broken lives: Injury-related morbidity and mortality in a turn of the century pauper cemetery. Ph.D. dissertation. Indiana University-Bloomington.
Dougherty, S. P., & Sullivan N. C. (2009). Primitive surgery in the industrial age: Trepanation and amputation from an early 20th century potter’s field. Poster presented at the 36th annual meeting of the Paleopathlogy Association, Chicago, IL.
Dougherty, S. P., Zotcavage, J., Milligan, C., Ivany, J., Mann, A., & Sullivan, N. C. (2005). Little deaths: Infant and child mortality from a late 19th century poorhouse cemetery. American Journal of Physical Anthropology Supplement, 40, 96.
Dwight, T. (1896). Anatomy laws versus body-snatching. Forum, 493–502.
Dykas, M. D. (1974). The breadless of Milwaukee County at the turn of the century. M.S. thesis, UW-Milwaukee.
Edwards, L. F. (1951). Resurrection riots during the heroic age of anatomy in America. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 25, 178–184.
Frank, L. F. (1915). The medical history of Milwaukee, 1834–1914. Milwaukee, WI: Germania Publishing Co.
Galland, R. B. (2003). Nineteenth century amputations at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, Reading. Annals of The Royal College of Surgeons of England, 85, 393–395.
Grauer, A. L. (1995). Bodies of evidence: Reconstructing history through skeletal analysis. New York, NY: Wiley-Liss.
Gurda, J. (1999). The making of Milwaukee. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee County Historical Society.
Gustafson, G., & Koch, G. (1974). Age estimation up to 16 years of age based on dental development. Odontologisk Revy, 25, 297–306.
Harrington, J. M., & Blakely, R. L. (1995). Bones in the basement: Bioarchaeology of historic remains in nonmortuary contexts. In A. L. Grauer (Ed.), Bones of evidence: Reconstructing history through skeletal analysis (pp. 105–119). New York, NY: Wiley-Liss.
Herring, D. A., & Swedlund, A. C. (Eds.). (2003). Human biologists in the archives. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Hewitt, J. D., & Mickish, J. (1987). Prostitution during the progressive era: The Middletown experience. Wisconsin Sociologist, 24, 99–111.
Highet, M. J. (2005). Body snatching and grave robbing: Bodies for science. History & Anthropology, 16, 415–440.
Hill, R. B., & Anderson, R. E. (1989). The evolving purposes of the autopsy: Twenty-first-century values from and eighteenth-century procedure. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine:, 32, 223–233.
Hodge, C. J. (2013). Non-bodies of knowledge: Anatomized remains from the Holden Chapel collection, Harvard University. Journal of Social Archaeology, 13, 122–149.
Hoffman, F. L. (1919). Pauper burials and the Interment of the dead in large cities. Newark, NY: Prudential Press.
Humphrey, D. C. (1973). Dissection and discrimination: The social origins of cadavers in America, 1760–1915. Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine, 49, 819–827.
Hurren, E. T. (2012). “Abnormalities and deformities”: The dissection and interment of the insane poor, 1832–1929. History of Psychiatry, 65–77.
Jenkins, G. B. (1913). The legal status of dissecting. Anatomical Record, 7, 387–399.
Karmgerd, A. (1979). Early days of the county institutions. Historic Wauwatosa, 11, 2–3.
Katz, M. B. (1996). In the shadow of the poorhouse: A social history of welfare in America (rev.). New York, NY: Basic Books.
Kaufman, M., & Hanawalt, L. L. (1971). Body snatching in the midwest. Michigan History, 55, 22–40.
Kletzsch, E. S. (1953). The inside story: Milwaukee County institutions and departments. Milwaukee, WI: Milwaukee County.
Korman, G. (1967). Industrialization, immigrants, and Americanizers: The view from Milwaukee, 1866–1921. Madison, WI: State Historical Society of Wisconsin.
Lambert, P. M. (2012). Ethics and issues in the use of human skeletal remains in paleopathology. In A. L. Grauer (Ed.), A companion to paleopathology (pp. 17–33). Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Lane, R. (1999). Violent Death in the City: Suicide, Accident, and Murder in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, 2nd ed. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.Laqueur, T. (1983). Bodies, death, and pauper funerals. Representations, 1, 109–131.
Larson, C. S. (1997). Bioarchaeology: Interpreting behavior from the human skeleton. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Lears, J. (2009). Rebirth of a nation: The making of modern America, 1877–1920. New York, NY: Harper.
Lowell, J. S. (1879). One means of preventing pauperism. Proceedings of the 6th annual conference of charities (189–200).
Lynde, W. P. (1880). The treatment of erring and criminal women. Proceedings of the 7 th Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (249–251).
MacDonald, H. (2006). Human remains: Dissection and its histories. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
McBride, M. (1992). Field of blood, field of the forgotten: The Potter’s Field of Milwaukee County. Wisconsin Medical Journal, 91, 493–499.
McFarlin, S. C., & Wineski, L. E. (1997). The cutting edge: Experimental anatomy and the reconstruction of nineteenth-century dissection techniques. In R. L. Blakely & J. M. Harrington (Eds.), Bones in the basement: Postmortem racism in nineteenth-century medical training (pp. 107–161). Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Meckel, R. A. (1998). Save the babies: American public health reform and the prevention of infant mortality, 1850–1929. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
Miller, W. S. (1936). Medical schools in Wisconsin: Past and present. Wisconsin Medical Journal, 35, 472–486.
Milligan, C. F. (2010). Paleopathology and public health in “America’s Healthiest City”: A comparative study of health from the Milwaukee County Institution Grounds Cemetery. PhD dissertation. Michigan State University, Michigan.
Milwaukee Writers’ Project. (1947). History of Milwaukee County. Unpublished manuscript on file at the Milwaukee Public Library.
Moore, W. (2005). The knife man: Blood, body snatching, and the birth of modern medicine. New York, NY: Broadway Books.
Nerlich, A., Peschel, O., Zink, A., & Rosing, F. W. (2003). The pathology of trepanation: Differential diagnosis, healing and dry bone appearance in modern cases. In R. Arnott, S. Finger, & C. U. M. Smith (Eds.), Trepanation: History, discovery, theory (pp. 43–51). Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger.
Novak, S. A. (2008). House of mourning: A biocultural history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Salt Lake City, UT: The University of Utah Press.
Novak, S. A., & Willoughby, W. (2010). Resurrectionists’ excursions: Evidence of postmortem dissection from the Spring Street Presbyterian Church. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 39, 134–152.
Nugent, W. (1995). Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870–1914. Bloomington, IL: Indiana University Press.
Numbers, R. L. (1981). A note on medical education in Wisconsin. In R. L. Numbers & J. W. Leavitt (Eds.), Wisconsin medicine: Historical perspectives (pp. 177–184). Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Nystrom, K. C. (2011). Postmortem examinations and the embodiment of inequality in the 19th century United States. International Journal of Paleopathology, 1, 164–172.
Nystrom, K. C. (2014). The bioarchaeology of structural violence and dissection in the 19th century United States. American Anthropologist, 116, 1–15.
Odell, R. H. (1892). Milwaukee’s industries. In Milwaukee Real Estate Board (Ed.), Milwaukee 100 photogravures (pp. 9–32). Milwaukee, WI: The Art Gravure and Etching Co.
Ophuls, W. (1926). A statisitcal survey of three thousand autopsies. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Ortner, D. J., & Putschar, W. G. J. (1985). Identification of pathological conditions in human skeletal remains. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Owsley, D. W. (1995). Contributions of bioarchaeological research to knowledge of nineteenth-century surgery. In S. Saunders & A. Herring (Eds.), Grave reflections: portraying the past through cemetery studies (pp. 119–151). Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholar’s Press.
Painter, N. I. (2008). Standing at Armageddon: A grassroots history of the progressive era. New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Co.
Park, K. (1994). The criminal and the saintly body: Autopsy and dissection in renaissance Italy. Renaissance Quarterly, 47, 1–33.
Park, K. (2006). Secrets of women: Gender, generation, and the origins of human dissection. New York, NY: Zone Books.
Pfeiffer, S., Dudar, J. C., & Austin, S. (1989). Prospect hill: Skeletal remains from a 19th century methodist cemetery, New Market, Ontario. Northeast Historical Archaeology, 18, 29–48.
Pobst, P. (2013). Should we teach that the cause of the Black Death was the bubonic plague? History Compass, 11, 808–820.
Potter, J. P. (1841). Results of amputations at University-College Hospital, London, statistically arranged. Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, 24, 155–176.
Potter, R. (1999). The greatest benefit to mankind: A medical history of humanity. New York, NY: Norton.
Richards, P. B. (1997). Unknown man no. 198: The Archaeology of the Milwaukee County Poor Farm Cemetery. PhD dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Richards, P. B., & Kastell M. W. (1993). Archaeological excavation at the Almshouse Burial Ground Milwaukee County Poorhouse, Wauwatosa, Wisconsin. Reports of investigation 333, Great Lakes Archaeological Research Center, Inc.
Richardson, R. (2000). Death, dissection, and the destitute (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Rosenberg, C. E. (1987). The care of strangers. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Ross, I., & Urquhart Ross, C. (1979). Body snatching in nineteenth century Britain: From exhumation to murder. British Journal of Law and Society, 6, 108–118.
Ryerson, E. W. (1933). Block osteotomy of the femur. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 15, 920–923.
Sanborn, F. B. (1880). Debate on pauperism. Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of Charities and Correction (260–263).
Sappol, M. (2002). A traffic in dead bodies: Anatomy and embodied social identity in nineteenth-century America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Saunders, S. R., & Herring, A. (Eds.). (1995). Grave reflections: Portraying the past through cemetery studies. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press.
Savitt, T. L. (1982). The use of Blacks for medical experimentation and demonstration in the Old South. Journal of Southern History, 28, 331–348.
Scheuer, L., & Black, S. (2000). Developmental juvenile osteology. New York, NY: Academic.
Sledzik, P. A., & Micozzi, M. S. (1997). Autopsied, embalmed, and preserved human remains: Distinguishing features in forensic and historic contexts. In W. D. Haglund & M. H. Sorg (Eds.), Forensic taphonomy: The postmortem fate of human remains (pp. 483–495). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.
Stanley, P. (2003). For fear of pain: British surgery, 1790–1850. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Tallmadge, G. K. (1937). Medical education in Milwaukee, 1848–1893. Wisconsin Medical Journal, 36, 303–316.
Thompson, C. J. S. (1942). The history and evolution of surgical instruments. New York, NY: Schuman’s.
Wadsworth, W. S. (1915). Postmortem examinations. Philadelphia, PA: WB Saunders Company.
Waite, F. C. (1945). Grave robbing in New England. Bulletin of the Medical Library Association, 33, 272–294.
Waldron, T. (2009). Paleopathology. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Waldron, T., & Rogers, J. (1988). Iatrogenic paleopathology. Journal of Paleopathology, 1, 117–129.
Walker, P. L. (2000). Bioarchaeological ethics: A historical perspective on the value of human remains. In M. A. Katzenberg & S. R. Saunders (Eds.), Biological anthropology of the human skeleton (pp. 3–39). New York, NY: Wiley-Liss.
Warner, J. H., & Edmonson, J. M. (2009). Dissection: Photographs of a rite of passage in American Medicine: 1880–1930. New York, NY: Blast Books.
Wesolowsky, A. B. (1991). The osteology of the Uxbridge paupers. In J. Elia, & A. B. Wesolowsky (Eds.), Archaeological excavations at the uxbridge almshouse burial ground in Uxbridge, Massachusetts. British Archaeology Reports 656, 230–253.
Wick, J. Y., & Zanni, G. R. (2003). Autopsy: Coaxing secrets from the dead. Journal American Pharmaceutical Association, 43, 18–23.
Wilf, S. (1989). Anatomy and punishment in late eighteenth century New York. Journal Social History, 22, 507–530.
Zeit, W. (1963). Marquette University School of Medicine: The first fifty years. Wisconsin Medical Journal, 62, 295–302.
Zuckerman, M. K., Kamnikar, K. R., & Mathena, S. A. (2014). Recovering the ‘body politic’: A relational ethics of meaning for bioarchaeology. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 24, 513–522.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to extend their gratitude to the anonymous reviewers who looked over the initial draft. Their thoughtful comments were greatly appreciated, if not always followed.
We would also thank Ken Nystrom for including us in his endeavor, as well as for his editorial guidance and saintly patience.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer International Publishing Switzerland
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Dougherty, S.P., Sullivan, N.C. (2017). Autopsy, Dissection, and Anatomical Exploration: The Postmortem Fate of the Underclass and Institutionalized in Old Milwaukee. In: Nystrom, K. (eds) The Bioarchaeology of Dissection and Autopsy in the United States. Bioarchaeology and Social Theory. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26836-1_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-26836-1_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-26834-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-26836-1
eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)