00:00:00
Evi Numen: He is indicted 25 times.
Elana Gordon: Is that a lot? Evi Numen: That is kind of
a lot for horse stealing.
00:00:11
I imagined him kind of a horse whisper.
Phoebe Judge: John Frankford was born in
00:00:17
1839 and grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
He was a master at stealing and selling horses.
00:00:24
He once joked to a warden that he was responsible
for every missing horse in Eastern Pennsylvania.
00:00:29
Evi Numen: And he just keeps getting caught and
escaping, so it's almost like a running joke.
00:00:35
Phoebe Judge: We're hearing about him from
Evi Numen. She's an exhibitions manager at
00:00:40
the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.
Evi Numen: In all the news articles it's implied or said outright that he's
famous. He's talked about as famous or
00:00:52
notorious. "Notorious horse thief caught,"
that's one of the titles that you'll see.
00:00:59
Phoebe Judge: Each time he was caught, he was put
in jail, but then he'd escape. He'd steal another
00:01:05
horse, get caught, and somehow escape again.
Evi Numen: Frankford had the reputation of
00:01:13
just not taking prison seriously.
Phoebe Judge: He mostly worked alone, but he once escaped jail with help from the
so-called Buzzard Boys, a gang of six brothers,
00:01:24
all named Buzzard. They used what they called the
bird cage trick. One brother, Ike Buzzard, who was
00:01:32
somehow allowed to keep a bird cage in his jail
cell, asked the guard, "Could you please take this
00:01:37
canary cage over to my brother, Abe Buzzard?"
Evi Numen: So the guard goes in to investigate,
00:01:44
one of the Buzzard brothers sneaks
past him, takes the keys, and locks him in the cell. And then of course he proceeds
and unlocks 11 other cells and frees the
00:01:57
inmates. One of them is Frankford.
Phoebe Judge: Eventually, the Lancaster County Jail got so sick of Frankford's escapes
that they built a special cell just for him.
00:02:06
Evi Numen: But he cut through it in November 1881.
[Laughs.] He made his way into the cellar where he
00:02:14
dug through a stone wall and crawled to the top of
the stone chimney. Keeper Wise of the prison — I
00:02:21
guess he wasn't very wise — heard him at work,
and when he appeared to the top of the chimney,
00:02:26
shot him in the face, destroying one eye.
Phoebe Judge: That's how we got the nickname One
00:02:31
Eyed Joe. In 1885, Frankford was finally caught
for the last time at a horse sale in Philadelphia.
00:02:39
The judge gave him the maximum sentence — 19 years
— and sent him to the most severe prison in the
00:02:45
state of Pennsylvania, if not the whole country.
Evi Numen: There are several news articles that
00:02:50
say that Frankford was such an incredibly good
escapist, or escape artist, that finally he met
00:03:02
his match at Eastern State Penitentiary.
Phoebe Judge: It was said that no jail was
00:03:08
strong enough to hold him. But John Frankford
never did escape from Eastern State penitentiary,
00:03:13
not alive anyway. For today's story, we've
partnered with reporter Elana Gordon,
00:03:19
from WHYY's The Pulse in Philadelphia, to find
out what exactly happened to John Frankford,
00:03:25
and to go inside a mysterious practice that
changed not only the city of Philadelphia,
00:03:30
but the medical community as
all of us know it today. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
[Music.]
00:03:37
Elana Gordon: Eastern State Penitentiary
is where solitary confinement basically
00:03:47
originated in the United States.
Evi Numen: Every single prisoner was in solitary
00:03:51
confinement at the time. So all the cells are made
for that. The only light that comes in the cells
00:04:03
comes from the skylight. It's called 'the eye to
God.' So they're supposed to get on their knees
00:04:10
and pray towards that skylight, upwards at where
God is presumably watching over them or looking
00:04:21
at them. And that's his only natural light.
Elana Gordon: It was a thin sliver of light.
00:04:29
Between Eastern State's opening in
1829 through its closing in 1971, 80,000 people served time there.
Evi Numen: If you see the gates to
00:04:39
each cell, they have — they're
iron, full iron with bolts, and they have a small window with bars on it.
Elana Gordon: So not easy to escape?
00:04:50
Evi Numen: Not easy to escape.
Elana Gordon: Guards would put hoods over prisoners when taking them out of
their cells so no one could recognize them
00:04:57
and they wouldn't know where they were.
Evi Numen: There are reports of torture.
00:05:04
We don't know if Frankford ever got in trouble,
it doesn't seem like he did. And his daughter,
00:05:12
who visits him semi-often — I think maybe once a
year or so — says that he never complained to her.
00:05:22
But when she asked him how it was in the prison,
he said, "Maggie, life is not your own here."
00:05:30
Elana Gordon: By the 1890s, about a decade into
his term, he wasn't as closely confined. He did
00:05:37
plumbing and other work around the prison. He
also looked after the prison's fierce dogs.
00:05:42
Being a skilled horse thief, you'd figure
he might've had a way with animals. Evi Numen: But during the time of Christmas of
'95, he was standing two, the prison dogs, and
00:05:56
apparently they got into a fight, the dog's did,
and he tried to separate them and he got bit.
00:06:02
Elana Gordon: The bite supposedly got
really infected, and by mid-January, Frankford takes a turn for the worse.
Evi Numen: He's bed-ridden, he's not very
00:06:12
conscious, so he's basically convalescing.
Elana Gordon: He was under the care of the
00:06:19
prison's doctor, Dr. John Bacon. Bacon
was probably as good a doctor as there was at the time. He trained under the best of
the best at the University of Pennsylvania.
00:06:30
But Frankford didn't make it. At 58 years old,
he died in the prison on January 20th, 1896.
00:06:37
[Music.]
Frankford's daughter, Maggie, traveled with her husband to the prison right away. They wanted
to have her father's body transported to Lancaster
00:06:48
for the funeral. But when they went to get it, the
prison said at first, no, that it wasn't ready,
00:06:53
so they had to wait and wait.
Evi Numen: When they get the body, he has bruises all over his body, he has
sewn marks, and his skull is cut open.
00:07:07
Elana Gordon: The top of Frankford's skull
appeared to have been sloppily stitched up
00:07:12
with some sort of twine. His stomach was cut
open, and the intestines were spilling out.
00:07:16
Evi Numen: So they get the body
and they see this mangled corpse with bruises, so they suspect foul play.
Elana Gordon: Dr. Bacon said that Frankford's
00:07:26
official cause of death was a strangulated
hernia, which is an intestinal blockage. He
00:07:32
had been suffering from that for a while, and
he did have that bad dog bite, but neither of
00:07:37
those things explained why his head and his body
had been cut up like that. And then a man named
00:07:43
Alexander Leipsner contacted Maggie and said he
had some information about what had happened to
00:07:49
her father. Leipsner was also an inmate at Eastern
State. He was in for second degree murder.
00:07:55
Evi Numen: They're friends, and he seems
to think very highly of Frankford. Elana Gordon: Leipsner told Maggie that he'd
been out of his cell working on a construction
00:08:03
project and decided to sneak over to the
hospital wing to visit Frankford. This was
00:08:09
January of 1896. It was cold and snowing.
Evi Numen: And he looks all over the place
00:08:16
and then he sees, across the yard, a body. He
sees a table with his friend's naked body on it.
00:08:30
And the doctor — the prison physician — is working
on him. He goes near, but he tries not to be seen,
00:08:39
he doesn't want to be discovered. And then
he sees Dr. Bacon remove Frankford's heart,
00:08:45
and he puts that on the snow, presumably to
keep it fresh. He's working on his skull,
00:08:56
and he opens up the skull and takes out the
brain, and he sets that on the snow too.
00:09:03
[Music.]
Elana Gordon: Leipsner said that two other inmates also
witnessed this, and he told Maggie he'd
00:09:10
be willing to testify to what he'd seen.
Evi Numen: The average layperson wouldn't
00:09:14
know what autopsy incisions look
like. It's typically a Y incision, where you draw an incision from, kind
of, the midway part down the chest and
00:09:28
shoulder area to the sternum, that's where the
Y spreads out, and then down the abdomen in
00:09:35
the middle. So that way you can open
the ribs, you can take the heart out, and you can take the entrails out, too.
Elana Gordon: During an investigation into
00:09:45
the conditions at Eastern State, a legislative
committee sought testimony from inmates,
00:09:50
wardens, and even newspaper reporters
about what had happened to Frankford. Alexander Leipsner took the stand.
Evi Numen: I can read it a little bit of this,
00:09:58
because it's really fantastic. He said he saw
Dr. Bacon go by with the entrails in a bucket,
00:10:05
and avowed that he had been told that all convicts
who'd died in the prison were treated that way.
00:10:13
That's a big one. That's what he claims.
Elana Gordon: So Leipsner claimed that
00:10:18
every inmate who died at Eastern State
risked becoming the doctor's guinea pig.
00:10:23
And when it was Dr. Bacon's turned to take
the stand, he testified that he had performed
00:10:28
emergency surgery for Frankford's hernia right
before he died, a last-ditch attempt to save
00:10:33
him. That's why his stomach was cut up. Then the
legislative committee asked him to explain what
00:10:38
had happened to Frankford's body after he died.
Evi Numen: This is good. [Laughs.] Concerning the
00:10:46
postmortem examination, Dr. Bacon said a prisoner,
whose first name was Arthur, had assisted him and
00:10:53
had removed the skull and taken out the brain.
The prison record of the case and its treatment
00:10:58
was then submitted to the committee. "Why did
you take out the brain?" Dr. Bacon was asked.
00:11:03
Because John Frankford was a typical criminal,
and they wanted the brain for scientific purposes.
00:11:09
Dr. Bacon said that he had taken the brains
out of two other bodies, and he added that
00:11:14
this was frequently done. He denied that
he had taken out the heart and the bowels,
00:11:20
and admitted that he might have carried the
brains in a bucket, as Leipsner had stated.
00:11:25
Elana Gordon: Wow.
Evi Numen: Yeah. It's fantastic stuff. [Laughs.] Sorry for the enthusiasm, but
it's just so fascinating to me that this was done
00:11:37
so casually. And when I pictured this trial, I
kind of pictured Dr. Bacon being kind of defensive
00:11:46
about it, saying, "Of course we did this."
Elana Gordon: He wasn't the only doctor stealing
00:11:51
people's organs. It was a strange time in American
history. To become great at healing the body,
00:11:57
you first had to scavenge for one to study, to
figure out how it worked. The medical industry as
00:12:03
we know it today was just establishing itself.
Evi Numen: So after the Civil War, you have,
00:12:10
first of all, a lot of medical innovations, like
the idea of the ambulance and the ambulance as
00:12:15
a service gets implemented. Then you have
embalming and surgery. And there are all
00:12:23
these veterans that have medical conditions
from amputations, nervous conditions, to other
00:12:31
complications from being in the battlefield.
And that creates a market — the market for
00:12:39
physicians to be trained in Philadelphia. So
you have all these medical schools sprouting
00:12:46
that are attracting new students.
Elana Gordon: And all of these students needed bodies to dissect, to learn and become
good doctors. The most ambitious attended
00:12:56
extracurricular dissection courses and even took
anatomy a second time, but there was a problem:
00:13:03
the math didn't add up.
Evi Numen: So in 1882, a few years before Frankford's death, the state
of Pennsylvania has 1,493 medical students in
00:13:17
need of bodies to dissect. Ideally they
would need 746 to make that possible, because each student gets half a body. But
there are only 406 lawfully available.
00:13:32
Elana Gordon: So that's like,
they're short by like half? Evi Numen: They're short by half.
Elana Gordon: And there just wasn't a legal
00:13:39
way to meet that demand. But a medical school's
reputation depended on whether it could provide
00:13:44
students with "abundant anatomical material."
Evi Numen: So they have to figure out other
00:13:51
ways to get bodies, and that's
where body snatchers come in or, as they're called at the time, resurrectionists.
Michael Sappol: The body snatcher term is mainly
00:14:02
associated with medical grave robbery.
Elana Gordon: Michael Sappol is a medical
00:14:07
historian who's written a book about this. He says
that digging up cemeteries and selling the bodies
00:14:12
to medical schools was a gold mine. The easiest
bodies to snatch were those of the poor and
00:14:18
vulnerable who didn't have money for a watchman
or a secure grave. These were African Americans,
00:14:23
immigrants, those who died in asylums and
prisons... There was also an urgency to getting
00:14:29
bodies. They would decompose fast. That's why
dissection classes mostly happened in the winter.
00:14:36
So in the early days, even medical students
got directly involved in stealing them.
00:14:41
Michael Sappol: They go in the dead of night
and they might bribe a watchman, or maybe
00:14:49
get a watchman drunk, or maybe they just look
for the moment when the watchman falls asleep.
00:14:56
And they bring in their wagon with their horse
and dig and unearth the body and then... away.
00:15:04
Elana Gordon: That sounds horrific
to me, and I would imagine to a med student today. What was different then?
Michael Sappol: Well, part of it was,
00:15:13
this is a rite of passage. First of all, imagine,
the medical students back then tend to be younger.
00:15:18
It's a culture of camaraderie and bravado.
You want to curry favor with the professor?
00:15:25
Bring the professor a body, bring the professor
an interesting body. You want curry favor with
00:15:32
your fellow classmates? "I got a body." They are
impressed with you, you're a brave strong lad.
00:15:37
Elana Gordon: And unlike today, when a lot of
us really want to donate our bodies to science,
00:15:42
there was a huge stigma to being dissected back
then, or even being autopsied. Nobody wanted
00:15:49
this to happen to them or their loved ones.
Michael Sappol: How you die really matters to
00:15:53
people. And if you're a poor person and you're
saving money, the money you might be saving
00:16:01
would be dedicated to your death.
Elana Gordon: So when the public caught wind of what doctors and
students were doing, riots broke
00:16:10
out. Some schools were even burned down.
Michael Sappol: There are a few notorious
00:16:15
examples of times when it became so lucrative
that body snatchers actually murdered people
00:16:22
in order to supply the anatomy department.
Elana Gordon: Murdering people and selling
00:16:28
them to science? Clearly a crime. Just
like digging someone up from their plot in a cemetery or opening up someone's head
to steal their brain is a crime, right?
00:16:39
You'd think so, but the laws to deal with this
were a mess. And not just in Pennsylvania.
00:16:44
Michael Sappol: So there's this
increasing demand for bodies, this system of looting and bribery and corruption is
unruly and unseemly, it attracts attention in
00:16:58
the newspapers, it's politically embarrassing.
Elana Gordon: Lawmakers tried to look the other
00:17:02
way, but the public was terrified and angry.
And more and more med schools kept opening,
00:17:08
increasing the demand for bodies.
Michael Sappol: Every medical school in the United States has a body
snatching scandal, and there's a
00:17:16
lore of body snatching in every medical school.
Elana Gordon: And then in 1882, just before that
00:17:23
famous horse thief John Frankford was captured
for the last time, Philadelphia's biggest scandal
00:17:29
breaks, and one of the most revered doctors
in America is accused of body snatching.
00:17:35
Michael Angelo: I knew you would
be asking us about Dr. Forbes. [Laughs.] It's a pretty amazing story.
Elana Gordon: This is Michael Angelo. He's
00:17:44
the archivist at Thomas Jefferson
University in Philadelphia. Michael Angelo: In 1882, Dr. William Forbes,
the foremost anatomist in the country,
00:17:53
here at Jefferson Medical College,
had a relationship with some people who supplied cadavers for the students.
Elana Gordon: Dr. William Forbes had actually
00:18:02
tried to be on the right side of the law. He wrote
the first anatomy legislation in Pennsylvania,
00:18:07
that legally directed unclaimed bodies
to med schools. But it was weak, and the bodies weren't coming in.
Michael Angelo: The local Philadelphia papers
00:18:18
knew that something was fishy, so
they basically set up a sting. Elana Gordon: Some journalists suspected foul
play at an African-American burial ground.
00:18:27
So one cold night in the middle of
winter, they camped out, armed with guns, ready to catch the body snatchers in action.
Michael Angelo: And so you could call them
00:18:37
muckraking journalists, no offense. [Laughs.] But
they actually got to the bottom of this because
00:18:42
there were bodies being stolen every winter from
these cemeteries. And so when they arrested these
00:18:49
individuals, they squealed and said Dr. Forbes
was the man who asked them to bring the bodies.
00:18:55
Elana Gordon: He was arrested on charges of
conspiring to steal bodies and violate graves.
00:19:01
There were a lot of protests against him, and some
thought it would be the end of Jefferson Medical
00:19:06
College. Forbes denied any involvement.
Michael Angelo: But the damning evidence
00:19:11
was that there were keys to the
dead house — or the place where the corpses are kept at the college —
in the possession of those men. And we
00:19:21
actually have the keys in the archives
today, so it's kind of a grisly reminder
00:19:25
of where America was 130 years ago.
Elana Gordon: Forbes was acquitted and, amazingly, he was able to use his own scandal to
pressure legislators. He wrote a new and improved
00:19:38
law that would compel every state institution —
prisons, morgues, hospitals — to give unclaimed
00:19:45
bodies to medical schools. And it worked. The
state finally said, "OK, we get it. Let's help
00:19:51
you figure this out without breaking the law."
Michael Angelo: He was the champion to rewrite the
00:19:56
anatomy acts in Pennsylvania, which provided for
a more rational distribution of human cadavers.
00:20:04
So as Philadelphia went, so did the rest of the
country. The Anatomy Act of 1883 was a really
00:20:11
important landmark for the entire country.
Elana Gordon: It marked a huge step in
00:20:16
legitimizing dissection in the state, and
basically helped transform a profession seen
00:20:21
as a bunch of monsters and ghouls in the public's
eye into one that was really legit and respected.
00:20:26
But the Anatomy Act didn't lift the curtain
on everything. Sure, it protected doctors,
00:20:32
but what about protecting those at the bottom
of the ladder, like prisoners? Doctors still
00:20:38
took liberties when no one was looking.
Evi Numen: So this is an interesting detail:
00:20:44
there is no clause of the Anatomy Act that
talks about organs. That's never mentioned.
00:20:55
Elana Gordon: Again, Evi Numen. She doesn't
get why, if the Anatomy Act had already
00:21:00
passed when John Frankford died, why Dr.
Bacon would so casually admit to removing
00:21:05
Frankford's brain and not fear the consequences.
Evi Numen: It appears that if you could get away
00:21:11
with taking organs, you can. Dr. Bacon says that
he took out the organs for scientific purposes,
00:21:21
and he says that he didn't know that was
illegal or that he had to ask to do this,
00:21:29
because his predecessors did it too.
Elana Gordon: A lot of doctors were studying
00:21:33
body parts on the side, and there were networks of
doctors helping each other find them. So even if
00:21:39
Dr. Bacon himself wasn't personally interested in
John Frankford's brain, he may have been trying to
00:21:44
hook up a friend. These were the days when people
still believed in phrenology, and the brain of a
00:21:50
clever criminal was especially desirable.
Evi Numen: My guess is that they had their
00:21:55
eye on him. This is a famous horse thief at
the time the idea of criminal physiology and
00:22:04
phonology is fairly alive and well and
the United States. So if something was peculiar about your head, you could tell
what that would correspond to and what
00:22:18
your character would be like. And there is also
the idea that a brain of a criminal would be
00:22:25
different.
Elana Gordon: So maybe his brain was taken for scientific study, or maybe someone
just wanted it on their shelf, like a trophy.
00:22:35
Frankford was a high profile
criminal and seemingly uncatchable. Think about all those sheriffs he managed
to outwit, all those people he ripped off.
00:22:45
Lots of people might've wanted his brain in
a jar. Either way, it wasn't all that unusual
00:22:51
to look at and even admire body parts in jars,
kind of like the way we look at art in a museum.
00:22:58
And there's one place in particular
where that's still true today. Evi Numen: This gallery is organized by body
part, so we start with brains and go into
00:23:10
hearts, lungs, and around the room to limbs
Elana Gordon: The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia,
00:23:16
where Evi Numen works, is an old but
still really busy anatomical museum. When I went to visit her, she showed me around the
skulls, tumors, and all sorts of other stuff on
00:23:27
display in jars of alcohol or formaldehyde.
Evi Numen: I'm going to take you to the wet
00:23:32
specimen room. So if you're squeamish,
just be prepared. There are a lot of things in jars.
Elana Gordon: OK.
00:23:39
[Sound of a door opening.]
Her nickname here is the 'Wet Specimen Hound.' Numen leads me to the basement, where they
store the stuff that's not on display.
00:23:48
They keep it cold in here.
[Sound of a door closing.] Evi Numen: So the age of them kind of
varies. The oldest ones we have are the
00:23:56
ones that are covered by pig's bladder, and
it could go back to 1870, 1860s even.
00:24:06
Elana Gordon: She points out the brains
in all sorts of different shaped jars. So some of these older brains could
have been acquired through somebody
00:24:17
taking or stealing a person's body?
Evi Numen: I can't say that for sure. Elana Gordon: But there's a possibility?
Evi Numen: There's always a possibility.
00:24:28
Elana Gordon: She told me she still believes
that maybe one day she'll find the brain of
00:24:32
John Frankford, that one-eyed horse thief.
Evi Numen: I hope that it's out there. There is no
00:24:38
real footnote about where it ended up. We
don't know if it was sold by Dr. Bacon,
00:24:48
if Dr. Bacon kept it, if it
was returned to the family. There is no mention of what actually
happens to his organs. So my hope is
00:25:00
that Dr. Bacon sold it to one of his colleagues,
and it ended up in a collection, and it's still
00:25:07
somewhere out there in Philadelphia, hopefully.
Elana Gordon: How would you know?
00:25:12
Evi Numen: It would probably be marked as the
brain of a horse thief. [Laughs.] Elana Gordon:
00:25:18
Why do you want to find this brain?
Evi Numen: Just to complete the story, to get some sort of resolution.
Elana Gordon: What's there to resolve?
00:25:26
Evi Numen: That's a good question.
I always believe that seeing, like, an open-casket funeral or the remains
of your loved one brings a sense of closure.
00:25:43
And this horse thief from, basically, the
turn of the century has become a fixture
00:25:52
in my life for the last two years, so I
want to follow the story to the end. Elana Gordon: After I left, Numen discovered a
funeral notice for John Frankford. It says he
00:26:05
was buried in Lancaster Cemetery. She went out
and looked, but she never did find his grave.
00:26:12
The one image she does have is a sketch
of Frankford from an obit. I've seen this
00:26:17
picture. Frankford looks so melancholy. But
when I look closer at that one eyelid of his,
00:26:25
slightly drooped over the eye he lost, it sort of
looks to me like he could be winking, like maybe,
00:26:32
even in death, he's managed to sneak away
one more time, his last great escape.
00:26:40
[Hopeful piano music.]
Phoebe Judge: That was reporter Elana Gordon from WHYY's The
Pulse in Philadelphia. To learn more
00:26:54
about what's changed in the regulation
and distribution of bodies for medicine,
00:26:58
check out their podcast this
week. You can find it on iTunes. Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and
me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks
00:27:09
to Alice Wilder and Freddie Jenkins.
Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal.
You can see them at thisiscriminal.com.
00:27:19
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