Graves Only Two Feet Deep.

New York, 1895

The town trustees of Flushing, who have been inquiring into the condition of the town cemetery have at last decided to put John Turner in charge. Mr. Turner was before the board and swore that he saw two dogs scampering about the cemetery. He watched them for a while and they commenced to dig. He saw them uncover a coffin, the lid of which had been broken, and eat the remains of a man who had been buried.

The coffin, Turner said, was only a few inches below the ground. Turner swore that he saw graves dug only two feet deep.

—The Long Island Farmer, Jamaica, NY, July 5, 1895, p. 1.

Declares His Wife's Body Vanished, Man Sues Cemetery

1920

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The alleged disappearance of a woman's body from the receiving vault of Calvary cemetery during the influenza epidemic in 1918 was the basis of a suit for $100,000 damages filed against the trustees who control the cemetery.

The suit is brought by Gaetano Ripatranzone, whose wife, Annie, died Oct. 12, 1918. Frank J. Rinaldi, his attorney, said the body was placed in the receiving vault of the cemetery, and the family was to be notified when a grave was ready. When no word was received, the attorney said the husband investigated and learned his wife's body had been lost or had disappeared.

John G. Agar, vice president of the board of trustees, was served with the summons. He said the cemetery officials claimed every body had been accounted for and any trouble should be between the family and the undertaker.

The Rev. William J. Stewart, who was managing director of the cemetery at the time specified, produced a letter which Supt. J. J. Cunningham of the cemetery sent him, saying Ruggiero Trepani & Co., undertakers, had brought a body described as that of "Anna Ripatranzone, 37 years," to the cemetery, and it was placed on the floor. He explained that bodies were coming faster than graves could be opened, and the receiving vault became filled, so arrivals were placed on the floor and a record of their location kept.

"The orders of the health department to place all bodies in temporary graves within a given time," he wrote, "tended to increase the work of identification."

It is said that when the department of health ordered the immediate temporary burial of all bodies they were placed in three trenches 16 feet wide, 330 feet long and 4 feet deep. They were tabulated, and later were interred in their proper grave holdings, except the body of one woman. It is said 14,000 bodies were received during four months of the epidemic.

Note: The last name of the man and his wife is spelled two different ways in the article. "Ripatranzone" is the first instance, "Repatrazone" is how she's referred to. I changed it, somewhat arbitrarily, based on the number of Google hits for each.

Decatur Doctor Caught Digging Up Negro Cadaver

Illinois, 1879

BODY SNATCHING.

A Decatur Doctor After a Negro Cadaver

His Operations Brought to a Sudden Conclusion.

The Decaturites are all worked up over a body snatching affair that occurred last Friday night. A prominent Decatur physician is implicated in the affair, and if he shows up the Decatur folks promise him an anti-cordial reception.

It seems that the above mentioned physician wanted to increase his knowledge of the human frame, and with this end in view he climbed the fence of a Decatur graveyard, having in his possession those necessary grave-robbing instruments, a pick and shovel. Strange to say this son of Esculapius seems to have a horror for the Caucasians. The reason of this is not known, but it is thought that Caucasian "stiffs" do not "pan out" as well as those of other races, therefore he concluded to get a "subject" of the African persuasion.

Having arrived at this conclusion he wended his way toward the "last resting place" of a recently "planted" negro. As soon as the grave was reached he unslung his pick and immediately began to delve into the newly made grave. He worked away with a will, and he was just stooping to raise the lid of the coffin when the deep stillness of the night was broken by the loud report of what seemed to him about seventeen cannons. The bullets flew past his cranium and buried themselves in the earth a few feet beyond him. The perspiration started in great beads to his forehead, and dropping his pick and shovel he precipitately fled. Scaling the graveyard fence, he took a short cut for his stable. Arriving there he immediately hitched his horse to a buggy, and in less time than it takes to "blow up a safe" he was driving across the country at a "Sleepy Tom" gait, and no tidings of his whereabouts have been received up to this writing.

The names of all parties are reserved, as it is thought that there will be further developments made.

—Fort Wayne Sentinel, Fort Wayne, IN, Aug. 19, 1879, p. 4.

A New Test of Death – Electrical Stimulation of Muscles

1878

A New Test of Death.

In the course of his researches on the electrical stimulation of dead muscles, Kappeler subjected twenty corpses to the action of various electric currents, noting the time of disappearance of contractility. In persons emaciated by chronic maladies it disappeared much more rapidly than in well-nourished individuals, or those who had had acute disease. It disappeared seven minutes after death at the quickest, and at six and a half hours at the slowest. In cases where a rise of temperature is observed after death, electric contractility persists longest. So long as there remains the least flicker of life the contractions continue intact. In the most prolonged faints, in the deepest lethargies, in poisoning by carbonic oxide, chloroform, etc., there is contraction so long as life lasts. But if the muscles make no response to the electrical stimulation, Kappeler pronounces life extinct.