In the Flesh

and cholera outbreaks, just to name a few. A third of all newborn's never made it to childhood. Healthcare wasn't widely affordable or even available, and while there were a few doctors who had studied in prestigious overseas schools, the city's growing population needed not just more doctors, they did better trained ones. At the time, America had only four medical colleges, and none of them were in Baltimore. Recognizing this need, a small handful of doctors held classes in

their homes. Becoming a doctor in the early eighteen hundreds also meant to learning how to be a surgeon, but students couldn't get a grasp on anatomy from drawings alone. That would be like learning to paint masterpieces from visiting a museum. It's a dark topic. But to become surgeons, students needed to practice, hopefully prior to operating on a live individual, and that meant working on cadavers. As you might imagine, doctors were a bit reluctant to keep decaying

bodies in their homes. Dissolve this. Doctor John Beale Davidge had a small anatomical theater erected behind his house, which he paid for with his own money. Inside, students learned about human anatomy and practiced their budding surgical skill on the dead. Not all of their cadavers came from donations or John does, though, and while it was legal to use bodies of executed prisoners, there simply weren't enough to go around. As you might also imagine, executions didn't always

happen when schools needed a new corpse. Adding to that, or talking about the early eighteen hundreds, they didn't have a way to keep bodies cold enough to last through semesters. The only viable solution was to raid graveyards. Naturally, neither surviving relatives nor the public at large were exactly fond of having the dead unearthed and dissected. Cutting up bodies was viewed by many as a desecration, which is another

reason why most schools used executed prisoners. Even then, the public still cried out for decency, so after a trip to the gallows, the executed were given a proper burial in a potter's field, where body snatchers and medical students alike rated the graves under the cover of darkness. Everyone understood this and looked the other way, but schools still didn't have enough bodies to teach students. Something had to give. The poorest of graveyards were monitored for new study material.

They were less likely to have night watchmen, and the pine boxes used by the poor were much easier to break into than the caskets at The wealthy had their loved ones interurred in, often unable to afford burial in certain graveyards, the Irish, Native Americans and free Black populations

suffered the most robberies. While doctors and professors teaching at medical schools didn't always partake in or encourage such activities, like everyone from the top level lawmakers down to the funeral directors, they didn't ask too many questions, but necessary for medical students are not. The poor didn't take to Dr Davidge's methods of teaching, and on November twenty one, eighteen o seven, an angry mob burned the theater to

the ground. Davage and other doctors took the matter up with the state and before long they want approval for a more secure and formal training facility. The University of Maryland School of Medicine was built and Davage became the school's first dean. Soon the school was one of the best in the country and boasted that their students had ample study material. While they didn't come right out and say it, everyone in the field understood exactly what that

material was. As for body snatching, the soil conditions were better in Baltimore than the Midwest or the North, even in winter. Disease and death rates were high, and with the B and O Railroad, moving bodies to other cities was easy. Through the years, Baltimore has had several nicknames like Charms City and Crabtown, and the eighteen hundreds, though it had a darker name, Resurrection City. I'm Lauren Vogelbaum. Welcome to American shadows. He didn't have a fancy address.

It was hardly an address at all. Frank, whose last name never made it into the history books, lived in an uncomfortably small room beneath the seats at the University of Maryland School of Medicine's lecture hall. Being a janitor wasn't what landed Frank and said history books though no. Aside from his custodial duties, Frank supplied the school with cadavers, and he was really good at this part of his job. Unlike a lot of body snatchers, he had a method.

Frank paid close attention to funerals. He followed the procession and watched the services and internment. He noted the placement of everything, the casket, the height of the mound, even the flowers the mourners left behind. Then he'd leave and return after dark. He wasted little time getting the job done, digging a hole just large enough to smash open the

head of the casket. After securing a rope to a butcher's meat hook, had run the hook through the jaw of the deceased, then haul the corpse from the casket as casually as if he had been fishing on a Saturday afternoon. Carefully, Frank would put everything back exactly as it had been before, stuffed the body into a sack, and stealthily returned to the school. Once inside, he had carked the cadaver through secret passageways to a holding area.

Frank's methods worked so well that he went undetected even had he been caught. Maryland merely imposed fines for body snatching. Other states had stricter laws, including imprisonment. Still, most judges tended to look the other way, and the public knew it. Seventeen riots erupted over body snatching in America in the seventy years between seventeen eighty five and eighteen fifty five,

and that's not even counting smaller incidents. Increasingly, states tried to appease the public by imposing more laws against stealing bodies, but with such a need for properly trained doctors, body snatching continued to rise. A conflict was brewing. A growing population continued to demand more and better trained doctors, but with fewer cadavers, competition among schools became fierce and prices of available cadavers rose. Not many students had the funds

and the schools turned out fewer qualified doctors. It was a vicious circle, so body snatchers, the better ones like Frank, had to be careful. Between Baltimore's high death rate and Frank's methods, the university found they had a different issue than most schools. The city had a surplus of cadavers and began selling the access to other medical schools, shipping via the B and O Railroad. Not in coffins, though, because body snatching was illegal, so they're shipping methods were

a bit unusual. Bodies were stuffed into barrels of cheap whiskey. The going price was fifty dollars for the bodies and thirty five cents a gallon for the whiskey. The alcohol not only helped well pickle the cadavers, but it also supplied seedy bars and other lesser establishments with liquor bearing an appropriate name, rot Gut. Frank the Janitor was effective and prolific, but he was hardly the city's best. That title,

the Resurrection King of Baltimore, went to William Jansen. Unlike many of his colleagues across the country, Jansen seemed constantly intoxicated. Though Jansen used many aliases. Everyone knew who he was when he rolled into town, and not because of his drinking problem. It wasn't even his rather robust build on his five ft eight frame, nor the shock of black hair and the leather dark skin that everyone knew upon sight.

It was his attire. See, he dressed the part as the most ghoulish of body snatchers, in a duster lank rubber coat, rubber boots, and thick gloves, all speckled with cemetery clay. But knowing who he was didn't mean he was arrested on site. There was still a need for cadavers in medical schools throughout the East Coast, after all, and there was also the matter of catching Jansen in

the act. While he didn't exactly look the part of a king in stature or attire, the press found him to be just as interesting as Royalty, often writing about his exploits. Jansen was said to have raw instincts for his line of work and was happiest in the company of corpses. During one newspaper interview, he boldly told the reporter of his plans to snatch a body on Christmas Eve and deposit the corpse on the chief of Police's doorstep,

all in the name of professional courtesy. William Jansen was a braggart, but he also proved an unreliable narrator, telling the press had been a medical student, did in Berlin or maybe it was Denmark. The facts always seemed a bit fluid. A little more was known about where he came from, though he did claim had immigrated from Denmark in eighteen seventy seven. Liar and body snatcher aside, the press remained enamored. They often presented him as calculating and ghoulish,

but also rather likable. He appeared calm and cool even under the riskiest and most difficult of circumstances, often cheerful. Jansen was the ghastly villain that the press and the public loved to hate. Frank the Janitor and William Jansen had similar methods. Did just the right sized hole, bash open the casket, and fish the cadaver out with a meat hook. Just like Frank, Jansen was very careful about scoping out the intended target and always made sure to

clean up the area behind him. So what made Jansen the body snatching king in Resurrection City? The difference between the two was that Jansen didn't bother with Potter's fields or lower status cemeteries. By his own admission, he preferred what he called the high octane cemeteries of the wealthy. In a lot of ways, stealing corpses from the rich was like a jewel heist to him, and that got Jansen plenty of press. And so it was one cold winter night that Jansen set out with spade and hook

in hand and a target on his mind. As it turned out, though, he wasn't the only one thinking about the recently departed Jane Smith, and snow wasn't the only thing about to fall. Elizabeth Joyner tossed and turned, unable to stop the men in her nightmare from unearthing her niece's body and carrying her away. When she awoke, she was certain it hadn't been just a dream. The wealthy and affluent Federal Hill family had buried her niece, Jane

Smith that very day. Unable to shake her feeling of unease, she dressed and hurried to the prominent Baltimore cemetery at the corner of North Avenue and Gay Street. Everything looked as it had the day before, the earth still fresh atop the grave, site. Relief must have flooded her for that brief second before the sun sparkled brightly on something in the dirt, catching her eye. She knelt to retrieve the item, and the realization that followed had to be overwhelming.

In her hands, she held her niece's cross, the very one that had been fastened around her neck when they had laid her to rest. The horror didn't stop there. Elizabeth noticed fresh dirt on her sister's grave nearby, and that just couldn't be. She had died six months ago. It seems the body snatchers had mistaken her sister's grave for her nieces and had now taken both mother and daughter. Naturally,

the well to do family complained and loudly. The medical school assured the authorities that, to the best of their knowledge, they did not have either of the two women's bodies in their possession. Satisfied, the police left it at that until a mysterious postcard emerged with information about the crime. The note was simple. Two black men had taken Jane's body to the University of Maryland's Davage Hall, where she

had already been dissected. There was more to the story than the notes stated, but the last part was true. For their dissection class, the students couldn't believe the condition of the cadaver who lay naked before them, her hair shorn from her scalp. The freckle faced young woman didn't resemble any corpse that had come from Potter's Field or the poorer class cemeteries. Later, one of the students remarked

to the local paper that Jane's corpse exuded refinement. Jane's mother, who had been too far decayed for dissection, had been stripped of her flesh so her skeleton could be used for instruction. The thieves had indeed taken her by mistake, and after discovering their error, realized that reburying her would be too time consuming. The two men the postcard mentioned hadn't acted alone, though there had actually been four people involved,

and one of them had reportedly been a professor. The word at the school was that a professor Jensen, said to be around forty five years old, had sold corpses to schools as far away as Atlanta and Saint Louis, often taking advanced orders for the winter. When shipping them, he would even label the bodies as pork or other food goods to avoid detection. Now, if you're thinking that Professor Jensen sounds a lot like the notorious body snatcher Jensen,

you'd be right. The two men were one and the same, although he wasn't a professor at all, a records show him enlisted as a mere medical student. Police soon arrested Jansen, who oddly or perhaps brazenly hadn't tried to skip town or member. In the state of Maryland, body snatching was usually only punishable by a fine. That is, until the bodies from one of Baltimore's most prominent families had been stolen.

Jansen and a white janitor named Emil Wrung, along with two black dissection room helpers, William Warren and Ezekiel Williams, were indicted by a grand jury. The school, though, stood by them. The current dean, Dr. L. McClain Tiffany not only bailed them out, but the university hired the state's best attorney for their defense, a man named John P. Poe. And Poe wasn't just any lawyer. He was on his

way to becoming the district attorney. Oh and for anyone curious about his last name, it does indeed seem that He was a distant cousin to the famous writer Edgar Allan Poe. It's not clear what defense Poe used for his new clients, but Judge Campbell W. Pinkney soon called the men to court without a jury. He declared all the men innocent, adding that the only ever against them had been a guess, not hard fact, which wasn't enough

to render a guilty verdict. It seems that even the Joiner and Smith families, as well off as they were, didn't have pockets deep enough to make a difference with top city officials. William Jansen, now a freeman, quickly left Baltimore. He would return, though with an even bolder theft than the last. As well known as his last body snatching heist had been, it paled to his next. William Jansen returned to Baltimore in the second week of January three.

He made no attempt to disguise himself, though so everyone knew he had returned. Jansen hadn't been in the city a week before the Post alerted the public to his latest daring theft. On January twenty, the paper wrote that Jansen had been arrested. It started with the body of Charles Shaw, a nineteen year old black youth, found guilty and hanged for murdering his sister. Like everyone the state executed,

Shaw was buried in a pine box in a potter's field. Young, healthy, and easily accessible, no one was surprised that Shaw's body was on everybody snatcher's list. Surprise came, and how fast and by whom. The grave diggers had barely thrown the last shovel of dirt onto Shaw's grave when Jansen, who preferred to call what he did resurrecting, arrived at the graveyard with the sun still shining. Jansen cleared a hole near the marker, cracked open the coffin, and hauled Shaw's

body out of the grave in his usual fashion. Less than an hour later, Shaw's body lay in a sack headed toward the university's doorstep. One Post reporter wrote that no other man on earth would have had the nerve to steal a body with the sun shining. Of course, just as before, Jansen hadn't acted. A own accompanying him that day had been a Georgetown University physician, appropriately named

doctor Krook. Together the two men carted Shaw's body to the university, where it was promptly auctioned off to several schools. It seems that Shaw was parceled out to a number of buyers, which wasn't entirely uncommon. As gruesome as that may sound, his head is sold for six dollars, while his arms and legs went for three dollars apiece. All told, Jansen's fee for services rendered an acquiring Shaw amounted to eighteen dollars, which Dr Krook, living up to his surname,

refused to pay. As you might imagine, Jansen wasn't too happy about that. Having tied one on Saturday night, a still inebriated William Jansen decided to return to the university to claim what he was owed. Having found no one there and the building locked. It was Sunday, after all, Jansen proceeded to break down the door, cursing loudly all the while. A policeman on his beat noticed the commotion and arrested Jansen not for attempted robbery but for the profanity.

Jansen spent that night in a jail cell to sleep off the alcohol, and was later released. But during his time in the cell, he had gotten an idea if Georgetown wouldn't pay him, he'd steal the body back and sell it to a more appreciative school. And so on Monday night, he traveled not to the university, but to the Washington Post. There he found two reporters, both of whom looked up from their desks when Jansen said, come

and I'll show you where Shah's body is. The reporters, eager for such a newsworthy story, quickly followed Jansen to Georgetown's dissection room. This time, Jansen fished a key from his pocket and let them all inside. At least that was the reporter's account of the events. Without a key, they'd be guilty of breaking and entering after all. But regardless of how they entered, the three men stepped into the room, and there before them, on a table, they

found Shaw, still intact. Whether it was the act of standing in a dissection room in the dead of night with a notorious body snatcher or the way Jansen tenderly stroked Shaw's arm, both men were driven by fear. Running from the room. Now alone, Jansen stole Shaw's body for the second time. Though he had walked to the university, he couldn't lug Shaw's body all the way to the

next hospital, so he hailed a carriage for hire. The driver, a man named Mac, charged Jansen five dollars and some whiskey to take the resurrectionist and his quiet friend to freedoman hospital known today as Howard University. Highly intoxicated, though Mac stopped at Columbia University instead, so Jansen took the reins. The sun was just beginning to rise when they finally reached Freedman Hospital. Jansen left Mac with the carriage while

he searched for someone willing to buy Shaw's cadaver. Things couldn't have gone more wrong, though, Mac, now a bit more sober, developed cold feet at the thought of carting a cadaver around town. Abandoning Jansen, he promptly headed to the Second Precinct, where he dropped off Shaw. It was one thing to take the body of an executed prisoner from Potter's Field, but Jansen's crime was a bit different. You see, there was a law against transporting bodies without

a permit. When the police showed up at Jansen's doorstep, he welcomed them in, simply stating, I've been expecting you. After a search of the premises, the police found a lancet and syringe filled with arsenic, a well known tool of the trade for resurrectionists looking to preserve bodies as long as possible. But although he was arrested once more, Jensen somehow wasn't charged with the initial crime of illegally transporting a corpse. No, he was charged with malicious trespass

for entering the dice section room. After finding him guilty three days later, Jansen went to prison, where he served a little less than a year for his crime. By the mid eighteen eighties, Jansen had moved on to another career, stand up comedy. Not finding his corpse routine very funny, he sought out other employment, and this time finding work is an attendant at an asylum. But although his career as the resurrection King was over, the press still loved him.

On November six of eight seven, they reported on him again, The King of Ghouls is dead, the headline for the post read, and with all the sincerity of a eulogy. They added that Jansen, who had loved his work in supplying medical schools with much needed cadavers, had done so with an enthusiasm usually reserved for men in more honorable professions. It was a long and fitting send off, tastefully and respectfully written. As it turns out, though Jensen made the

paper one last time. Today, downtown Baltimore is a busy place. It ranks thirty in America for the most populated city. Navigating downtown can be challenging with its bustling traffic and crowded one way streets. As one would hope with old historic cities, the buildings there are mostly older. In fact, over a third of them are listed with the National Register for Historic Districts, and like in any well storied city,

it can be easy to overlook any given detail. For example, on a tree lined stretch of West Lombard Street, people at a bus stop awaiting their connection are probably unaware of went on inside three story building behind them, even though it's been there since eighteen twelve. Today the sign says University of Maryland School of Medicine. But the building was a key part of William Jansen's story. It's Davage Hall.

The small article published on the Valentine's Day following Jansen's death was another easy to miss a bit of history. It was really nothing more than a blurb published by the police department advertising a sale of items that accumulated over the years. The advertisement read two spades and a hook used by Jansen, the body snatcher. The item sold quickly, fetching sixty five cents for the lot, oh and one more thing. At the time of his death, Jansen was

apparently penniless and alone. There's no record of a proper burial, and there had been no one to claim his body. Since he had been broke. The state had had no funds for his burial either. As a pauper. It stands to reason that he might have been buried in a potter's field. Jansen had once said that if he could resurrect his own body for dissection, he would. Of course, despite the term resurrectionist, Jansen couldn't rise from his grave

and find his way to the nearest teaching hospital. But in a twist of fate, I can't help but wonder if the undisputed resurrection king had found a way to do the next best thing. There's more to this story. Stick around after this brief sponsor break to hear all

about it. People passing by the woman begging for change would never have known should come from a wealthy and respected family in eastern Maryland, While not much is written about her parents or the family dynamics, we do know that when Emily Brown's sister became a widow, Emily took

a job as a dressmaker to help support the children. Later, after her brother died, Emily found relief from her sorrows in whiskey and opium, but it didn't work, and thanks to her addictions, she lost her job and resorted to begging to keep a roof over her head and food in her stomach. Her share of the rent was two dollars and fifty cents for a room and a cheap boarding house at Number three pig Alley, and sadly, when her addiction called, Emily spent her money on the fix

instead of paying rent. After just six weeks, she owed fifteen dollars. Her landlady Mary Blockson, also lived at the boarding house, along with Mary's twenty eight year old son from a previous marriage, John Thomas Ross, and Mary's fiancee Anderson Perry. Perry, who was partially paralyzed, worked as an assistant janitor at the University of Maryland's School of Medicine. While at work, one day, Perry brought up his fiance's

delinquent boarder to another janitor, Albert Hawkins. Hawkins offered a solution, had earned a bit of extra cash selling cadavers to the school, and maybe Emily Brown could help them earn more. Parry went home and ran the idea past Ross, and on December tenth, just five days before the wedding, the three men put the plan into action. Hawkins stood outside,

acting as a lookout for Mary. She had been soft hearted enough continuing to let Emily stay without paying that they felt it best to keep her in the dark. It was a Friday night and Emily had been out begging that day. She arrived home and, suspecting nothing, went inside there Perry struck her in the head with a large brick. He left her bleeding on the floor and went outside to stand watch while Hawkins went in to

finish the job. After stabbing Emily to ensure she was dead, the two men dragged her body into the backyard and tossed a mattress over it to conceal it. They waited until dark, then stuffed Emily's body into a bag. Hawkins went back to the university, telling the night janitor. Then a man outside wanted to borrow a wheelbarrow. When the request was refused, the men borrowed one from a place selling coal nearby. Raw returned to the university wheeling in

Emily's body. When asked how he had come across the body, Ross claimed he had gotten it from a potter's field. Now, the night shift janitor, who had taken part in a few graveyard excursions of his own, may not have had a problem with the profession, but he was picky about how those bodies were acquired. Obviously, a fully clothed body that was still warm and more than a little bloody

raised a few flags. Suspecting foul play, he notified Hiram Woods, the assistant anatomy professor, who in turn called upon doctor Herbert Harlan to examine the body. Confirming that the woman had indeed been murdered, Doctor Harlan contacted the police. When the authorities showed up at the boarding house, Perry confessed to the plan, but implicated Ross as the murderer. Ross, though, told the police that Perry and Hawkins had killed Emily Brown and that his only involvement had been to sell

her corpse for fifteen dollars. The corner determined that not only had her skull been crushed, but that she had been repeatedly stabbed, and that her ribs had been broken. With the coroner's evidence and the testimony of the suspects, the jury took less than twenty minutes to find all three men guilty, although university employees Hawkins and Perry were

set free. While awaiting his death sentence, the following September, Ross sent a poem had written to the Baltimore Sun. In it, he readily admitted to his part in the plot to kill Emily Brown and sell her corpse, but questioned the court and its verdict. Ross contended that in the land of liberty, how was it just that he alone paid the price for such a crime while the real killers walked free, As was so often the case,

the university employees were not held accountable. And that night shift Janitor you might recognize his name from earlier in our story. He too had stood trial and was also found innocent, and he had been one of the men there that night with William Jansen during the theft of James Smith and her mother's bodies, none other than Email Wrong.

American Shadows is hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum This episode was written by Michelle Muto with researcher Robin Miniter, and produced by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Minky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show, visit grim and mild dot com. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.