Chicago's Body Snatchers

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
​In 1875, Chicago's county hospital was located in the South Side. Even then it was considered old and rickety. The morgue was an out-house attached to the hospital. It was located apart from the main building because of the bad odor coming from it. Bodies would be stretched out on slabs awaiting burial. Only during winter months did the place not smell like a charnel house.

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Originally known as City Cemetery where the Potter's Field was located it was renamed in honor of Pres. Lincoln. The Couch Mausoleum is the only standing remnant of the cemetery

Present day only the Couch Mausoleum is left of the City Cemetery that operated from 1843 to 1866. Due to the cemetery's proximity to marshes, decomposed remains would wash ashore when water levels rose, contaminating the drinking water and causing cholera outbreaks.

Morbid as it might seem, the land was repurposed into a park. In the wake of the Civil War it was named after President Abraham Lincoln. The only remnant of the cemetery was the mausoleum erected for Ira Couch who died in 1857, from a heart condition while visiting Cuba. The 50-year-old was considered one of the wealthiest men in Chicago. Why his tomb was left behind when Lincoln Park was established remains unknown. Even now there is no official count of how many are buried there. It could be as many as 13, or only Ira Couch is there.

The same year Ira Couch died, a scandal rocked the city of Chicago, and it had to do with grave robbers.

The city officials hired the Pinkerton Detective Agency to investigate claims of resurrectionists. Alderman Green who was in charge of the cemetery, for some reason declined to use the city police in "ferreting out the body-snatchers".

Allan Pinkerton made the following report:

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Some two weeks ago four bodies were buried in the Potters Field. The second day following that of their interment, Joe the grave-digger noticed that the graves had been disturbed, and on examining them, found the bodies removed. The coffins, were broken open, the bodies carried off, the coffins replaced and graves re-filled.

An examination of the ground satisfied the detectives that the persons who had robbed the graves had entered the cemetery with a wagon...  and went west to Clark street.

Rush Medical College, Chicago c. 19th century

​Seven or eight detectives were posted so that it was impossible for anyone to leave or enter without being seen. Several days passed until on a dark night they saw a buggy slowly approaching along North Avenue towards Clark Street. They stopped the buggy on Chicago Avenue, and found the man who drove it was Martin Quinlan, the city sexton. Two other men in the buggy ran off.

They carried two dead bodies—a man and a woman. They were inside canvas bags and bound with ropes. The bags turned out to be mail bags taken from Jackson Hall.

The man had an amputated leg, and he was identified as Louis Steffle, a man who was injured some time ago by falling from a pile of lumber, and who died after his leg was amputated. The woman was identified by her husband as Mary Ann Best. The bodies were turned over to the coroner to be reburied.

Quinlan was arrested and held on $2,000 bail.

The detectives suspected the two men who escaped where medical students. They took the horse and buggy, and let the animal wander up and down different streets until came to the Wright & Currier's livery stable on Michigan Street.

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Cook County Hospital c.1877

The detectives learned the description of who had hired the buggy out the previous night. It fit the description for Eli York a medical student from Rush Medical College. He was arrested and released after Dr. Brainard, President of the College paid his $800 bail.

The detectives then examined the graves which had been robbed and found two other bodies hidden in the bushes. They were stuffed in canvas bags like the other two. These, with the bodies taken two  weeks before totaled eight.

Inspection of the cemetery grounds found another grave had been opened, but when taking it from the coffin it had the peculiar smell of someone who had died from small pox, and the robbers abandoned it with the rope still tied around it.

Two years before a visitor from the the East had died suddenly.  A person was sent to identify the body, which in the meantime had been buried in the Protestant Cemetery.  When they opened the grave it was empty.  They unearthed a total of eleven graves in hopes of finding the man's body, and ten of them were empty.

Quinlan pled guilty to two of the nine indictments against him, and paid $500 plus court costs and the indictments against York were nolle pros'd.

This was not the end of the grave robbing. In 1875, after the closure of the City Cemetery a gruesome discovery was made inside four barrels as to what happened to unclaimed corpses.

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​Bodies were doubled across the middle and had their chins rammed down upon their knees so as to pack them in the narrow space. Among the number was a woman whose luxuriant brown hair displayed its disheveled tresses above the top of the barrel, in which such ruthless barbarity her body had been jammed. Her features were concealed by her position, but it could easily be seen that her frame was thin and wasted, and that she had been a woman above the average height.

In another of the barrels was the body of a boy whose attenuated limbs and narrow chest seemed to declare him the victim of consumption. His skin was red and raw, looking as if worn thin over his protruding bones.

​The body of a man in one of the other barrels presented similar indication of wasting illness. He had a long black beard which lay over his knees in the position into which he had been forced in the barrel. 

Grave robbers c.19th century

During the 1800s many resurrectionists were medical doctors who stole corpses to supply universities and supplement their income.

At 167 No. Wells Street, Mr L. Braussweig testified that on December 15, 1874 he had rented his barn as a stable to a young man named George G. Green. He paid two month's rent. A servant for Mr. Braussweig commented to him two weeks later that he had never seen a horse or a buggy in the barn. He went to the barn accompanied by his brother-in-law, but could not gain entry. With a hatchet they knocked in a board, and a "cash boy" crawled in through the opening. All they found were empty boxes and a dark lantern. Mr. Braussweig reported to police that he had seen the boy who rented the barn, load boxes into a wagon on the night of January, 14. 

North Side policemen were detailed to watch the barn. Nothing occurred during an entire weekend until Monday night, when a wagon driven by two men drove up. He went inside and brought out a box to lift into the wagon. When the police approached, both men ran away. Inside police found five barrels with bodies inside. All the bodies were naked except for wearing gloves and stockings, and looked to have been stolen from their graves. 

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The old Mercy Hospital building at 26th Street and Calumet Avenue in Chicago.

Receipts that were recovered inside the barn showed one consigned to a destination in Dexter, Michigan, and the other to a druggist in Iowa City, Iowa. Expressmen who had been picking up the barrels testified later in court that they had been picking up barrels for three months. Four North Side undertakers came to look at the bodies, but did not recognize any of them.

One of the resurrectionist that was arrested was Dr. L. R. Williams; his brother who was an accomplice escaped. Dr. Williams was freed on a $1,500 bond, which he jumped.

Further examination of the bodies found they were robbed from the Potter's Field at Jefferson township. It seemed that during the winter the resurrectionist would ply their trade, since they could transport the bodies long distances before they would start to stink from corruption.

The belief was that other bodies sent to Iowa were destined for the Iowa City Medical School, to a recipient named Thomas Green. He turned out to be the janitor for the college.

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Pinkerton's involvement in the body snatching case in Chicago

The corpses were removed by opening the front lids of the coffins, and then a butcher's hook was thrust into their eyes to pull them out. They were stripped of their garments, stuffed into a bag and then taken to the barn on Wells Street. The grave robbers made sure to reinter the coffins so no one would notice the graves had been disturbed.

One of the corpses was eventually identified as an unknown woman who was found frozen to death on the corner of Emerald Avenue and 29th Street, and buried in the potter's field.

​One of those implicated with the transportation of the corpses was a Dr. Wilder who had graduated from Northwestern University, and had been an assistant house-surgeon at Mercy Hospital. It was later discovered that he was also an abortionist who would steal the corpses of women who had died from botched abortions along with their infants. 

It wasn't until 1875, that laws would allow medical colleges in Illinois first right to unclaimed bodies destined for the Potter's Field. However universities in Michigan, Indiana and Wisconsin would hire resurrectionists to steal bodies for them, since they were not allowed access to unclaimed corpses.

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Hooter's on Wells Street, Chicago c.2018 (Google Maps)

Fast forward to Chicago in the 21st century, about a mile and half north of the Couch mausoleum, where all the skulduggery took place is a Hooters at 660 N. Wells Street. This spot was where bodies would be sorted after being stolen, and loaded for delivery to different destinations.

In 1915, a portion of the 844 victims of the Eastland cruise ship disaster on the Chicago River were brought there since there was not enough space at the regular morgues. How many of those held at this charnel house ended up being stolen is unknown.

It's not surprising that those who work there have reported eerie sights and weird sounds in the basement. Shadow people are seen flitting around, and an unseen presence will be felt by those using the stairs to the basement. Items fall for no reason from the shelves, and disembodied voices are heard until someone goes to investigate. Patrons of the restaurant have reported apparitions with vacant eyes and wearing 19th century clothes. Some believe they are trapped souls.

The address at 660 N. Wells Street wasn't always used for business purposes. In 1923, a flat was being rented out for $25 per month. In the following decades it had different small apartments in the building for rent. Next door to it, the Erie Cafe was opened by Richard Giometti during the 1920s. It like other cafes around it, served and operated bootleg and gambling operations during Prohibition. In 1924, a bomb was thrown in the Erie Cafe's cloak room.

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Grave robbing took place in all major cities with large cemeteries

A short walk southeast of the Hooters is Clark Street. In 1924, the Poodle Dog Café was raided for holding and selling illegal hooch like beer and moonshine. 

By the 1970s the area was known as a red light district.

In 1981, where the Erie Cafe once operated, the space was refurbished and made into the Golden Dreams Italian restaurant.

No doubt there was enough skulduggery on Wells Street to account for the ghostly happenings, or perhaps it's just simply those who were unnamed in life and death; perhaps they cannot find peace because of the desecration committed against their bodies.

​However, Chicago cemeteries were not the only ones to be plundered. 

In 1882, a grave digger told their story to a Philadelphia Press reporter. He told of all the hypocrisy he had seen in the course of his job. He then went on to retell his own story. He said, "I feel talkative today, and I know grief. Great God! Do I not? Walk a little with me."

​They walked to an area of the cemetery near the river walk. He pointed to a plain slab marked only with initials and a date. He continued his story:

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There lies my past my present and my future. Thirty-five years ago I was a doctor with a rising practice, and she who lies there was to have been my wife. One June evening we saw each other for the last time, but we little thought so then. I was going on a fortnight's journey, and when I returned we were to be married, and that evening we were arranging all the particulars for the wedding. She was the picture of health, and her parting words to me were: 'James, I am glad you are going away for awhile, I shall try and get thinner; look how fat my arms are.'

I do not know how it happened, but I did not receive a letter from her while on my journey, though I afterward heard she wrote several, and I posted one every day. I returned to the city fifteen days subsequently by a late train, and, feeling tired, I postponed going to her house until the morning. I had no suspicions of the frightful thing that had happened while I was absent. However, I did not get to bed that night. At my rooms, waiting for me, were a party of students, who told me they had purchased the body of a young woman from a resurrection man, and would I help them dissect the corpse? I pleaded fatigue, but they begged hard, so I went with them to the hospital, and getting out my instruments, approached the body. It was covered entirely with a sheet, except one arm, and I suggested that we should experiment on the limb and leave the remainder of the body for the next day. Accordingly the incisions were made, and I was preparing to dislocate the arm from the elbow, when some one suggested that it would be better to remove it from the shoulder, and drew aside the cloth. With a shriek of horror I recognized the dead features of the girl to whom I was to have been married on the following Thursday.

I can speak calmly of it now. Years have soothed the frightful anguish of that night. For months I was an inmate of a lunatic asylum, and when I slowly recovered I was an altered being. I had lost all idea of my profession. I was a wreck in every way. They took me to her grave. Her body had been willingly relinquished by the students, and it had been re-interred in this cemetery instead of the suburban churchyard where its repose had been so ruthlessly disturbed. Here, where I am standing now, they told me the story of her death.

A severe cold, congestion of the lungs and the breaking of a blood vessel had killed her ten days after I had bidden her good-bye. They had written to me, but the letter had miscarried. On the night of her burial (the day I returned), her fresh grave was robbed and the corpse sold to the students with the result I have just related. I haunted the cemetery for months, and at last got the appointment of grave-digger so that I could constantly be near her.

It is 35 years ago now, and I have grown into a common laboring man, coarse in my speech, low in my habits, a grave-digger. What does it matter? She and I will be united sooner or later, now I am always with her.