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| The Blockley Insane Asylum in 1899. |
In the late 19th century a boarding house once stood on the corner of Eighteenth and Locust Streets in Philadelphia. Owned by Mrs. Seth B. Stitt, the boarding house offered rooms to anyone who could afford it, for as long as they could afford it, and this resulted in a steady stream of temporary tenants with peculiar habits, shady backgrounds and questionable moral character. Like other such lodgings of the era, the tenants of Mrs. Stitt's boarding house included everything from young bachelors to old drunks, traveling salesmen, itinerant preachers and all things in between.
One tenant who lodged at the Stitt house in the summer of 1889 was a black Sunday school teacher named Morris Foster, who hailed from Lynchburg, Virginia. On June 18, Foster was arrested after entering an elderly woman's home, grabbing her by the throat, and exclaiming, "God sent me here to reign over all mankind!" The woman, Mrs. Swan, managed to break free and run outside, but Foster chased her down, tackled her, and gave her a black eye. This altercation caught the attention of Officer Craig, who, after arresting Foster, noted that the wild man seemed to possess the strength of a dozen ordinary men. Foster was eventually handcuffed and taken to the station house at Eighth and Lombard Street.
Chief Police Surgeon Andrews and Dr. Loder was summoned to examine Foster and concluded that he was suffering from a "religious mania", possibly induced by drugs or alcohol. Foster told the doctors that his insides felt as if they were on fire, but admitted to having only a drink of lemonade the previous evening. Believing that Foster was insane, he was admitted to Blockley Hospital-- a charity hospital and almshouse for the poor and homeless in West Philadelphia. Reverend Miller, of the Cherry Street Baptist Church where Foster taught Sunday school, was notified and he, along with other church members, proposed raising money to have Foster transferred to the Norristown Insane Asylum for psychiatric treatment. But eight days later, before the money could be raised, Foster took a turn for the worse and died at Blockley. According to his death certificate, Foster had succumbed to an illness described only as "brain trouble".
Morris Foster was buried at Lebanon Cemetery on July 1, but his friends, believing that Foster may have been poisoned by an unknown enemy, demanded an exhumation of the body. Unfortunately, with the deceased being a colored man of humble means in the 19th century, the authorities felt that an autopsy would be a waste of time and money. However, it was Foster's landlady of eleven years, Mrs. Stitt, who argued vociferously on behalf of the dead man, insisting that Foster was a trusted friend who eked out an honest living as a restaurant waiter, a man with no known vices who saved every penny that he earned to send to his invalid mother in Lynchburg. Mrs. Stitt was livid when authorities refused to perform a post-mortem examination of her tenant, and she wrote dozens of letters to anyone who would listen. Her grassroots campaign worked, and on July 6, an army of concerned citizens marched to the office of Coroner Ashbridge demanding that he issue a permit for exhumation.
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| An 1887 artist's rendering of the Blockley surgical ward |
A Graveside Surprise
Morris Foster's corpse was exhumed on July 19 and a graveside post-mortem examination was performed on by Dr. Minford Levis and Dr. C.W. Miller. Armed with four empty glass jars, the two physicians prepared to remove portions of Foster's internal organs and bone so that a chemical analysis could be made by Professor Henry Leffman of Jefferson Medical College. But as they undressed the corpse, which, by all accounts, was in an excellent state of preservation, Levis and Miller made a shocking discovery-- a line of deftly-placed stitches over the abdomen of the deceased Sunday school teacher. Evidently, someone had already performed an autopsy. But who? And, more importantly, why?
Since Morris Foster died before any of his friends had even raised the possibility of murder, there was no good reason for such action, as the dead man's death certificate had listed a brain disorder as the cause of death. Yet, Dr. Levis and Dr. Miller probed the abdominal cavity and found that, for some unknown reason, Foster's spleen and kidneys had been surgically removed. Believing that physicians from Blockley Hospital had removed the organs, they took samples of liver, stomach and intestine.
But then one of the graveside spectators, Dr. Andrews, mentioned that he had read about cases where poison had been detected in the frontal bone of the skull. Dr. Miller grabbed his saw and cut into the scalp, which he then peeled from the skull. It was soon evident that the previous autopsy had included a partial removal of the brain. With the skull exposed, Dr. Miller clutched a hammer and shattered the frontal bone into three pieces, which he placed into one of the jars before Dr. Levis sewed up the body. The jars of tissue and bone samples were taken to Dr. Leffman's office on Walnut Street and locked in a safe.
The pine box containing Foster's mortal remains was put on a wagon and conveyed to Olive Cemetery in West Philadelphia, so that the deceased could repose alongside other members of the Cherry Street Baptist Church (Sadly, Olive Cemetery, which was once the city's largest African-American burial ground, eventually fell to ruin and was condemned; the remains were later interred at Eden Cemetery in Delaware County).
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| Olive Cemetery |
A Search for a Dead Man's Kidneys
The report of Foster's missing organs and the desecration of his corpse caused a great deal of public outcry, even among the white community. In Victorian times, when death and the afterlife was viewed with unparalleled mystique and sentimentality, the desecration of a corpse-- even the corpse of a destitute black waiter-- was revolting to the extreme. Newspaper reporters demanded answers as they publicly questioned the post-mortem examination process at Blockley Hospital. And they had good reason to ask these questions, as Blockley Hospital had made numerous headlines in recent weeks for all the wrong reasons.
In June of 1889, during the time when Morris Foster was a patient, serious allegations of cruelty against patients surfaced. Three staff members named Devlin, Marshall and Williamson were eventually convicted of assault and battery after a jury found the men guilty of torturing insane patients. During the trial, it was claimed that four suspicious deaths had occurred at Blockley in a short period of time after orderlies had punched the mental patients in the abdomen (shockingly, all three men were permitted to return to duty after their conviction). As serious as these allegations were, it wasn't entirely uncommon for orderlies, keepers, and even nurses, to abuse patients who were poor or mentally ill. But the mystery of Morris Foster's missing organs was even more disturbing, as physicians and surgeons were held to higher standards of conduct.
On July 22, Blockley's chief resident, Dr. Wells, addressed the matter, and insisted there was no fault in their system of performing autopsies. He believed, however, that the fault lay entirely with careless and overworked surgeons. This was evidenced by some disturbing revelations; there had been reports of one dead man's organs removed for dissection purposes and accidentally placed into another man's body, reports of female organs being found inside male bodies, vice versa. In the case of Morris Foster, it was determined that the stomach removed at the graveside by Drs. Levis and Miller was not actually the stomach of Foster at all, but of another patient who had the misfortune of dying at Blockley around the same time.
An examination of hospital records revealed that Foster's autopsy at Blockley had been performed on June 26 by a doctor named de Schweinitz, who was assisted by Dr. Sheppard Voorhees. However, since Voorhees had little experience, he asked another physician, Dr. J.L. Rothrock, to remove Foster's brain. The brain showed significant signs of disease, thereby explaining the bizarre behavior of the Sunday school teacher. Afterward, Foster's corpse was sewn up by attendant William Walter. When pressed by a reporter from the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chief Resident Wells insisted that he had not been present when the autopsy was performed.
"I was not present at the Foster post-mortem examination, although it it likely that two or three were made at the same time," he stated. "I don't know whether the stomach was opened or not. Of course, if it was, there ought to be mention of it. If it was not Foster's stomach inside his body, why, then it must've been removed." Wells explained that it was customary for a doctor to closely study the specimens as the autopsy was being conducted, and, theoretically, this could cause a mix-up if no one was paying attention to the cadavers on the operating table.
Wells also told the Inquirer that, in his opinion, the sloppy results were caused by the attendants. "If they (the organs) were mixed up, it was a carelessness, and it seems to be on the part of the attendant," he explained. "There are two men in the room, and they only assist in sewing up the bodies and returning the parts... It is a rare occurrence for an organ to be placed in another body, but it could happen in any hospital. It could happen very easily, but it is not on account of any defect in the system."
When asked about the whereabouts of Foster's spleen and kidneys, Wells theorized that they had probably been sewn inside the body of another cadaver by mistake. Somewhere in a Philadelphia cemetery was buried a man, or woman, with four kidneys instead of two and two spleens instead of one.
Also interviewed was Dr. Rothrock, the man who removed Foster's brain. He, too, expressed a lack of knowledge as to what becomes of the organs he examined in the post-mortem room.
"I removed the brain and examined it, but do not know what was done with it," admitted Dr. Rothrock. "Occasionally an organ will be kept out for the examination of the chief resident, but I cannot say what disposition is made after that." According to Rothrock, there was another autopsy being conducted in the same room at the same time by a Dr. Ashton, this deceased patient being a man named William Young.
Because of the claim that Morris Foster had been intentionally poisoned, it became clear that such careless treatment of the deceased could have serious consequences. Pathologist Dr. Henry Leffman had been unable to find traces of poison in the samples he had received, but since the organs he analyzed may or may not have belonged to the supposed victim, all his work was in vain-- and a potential killer might've escaped justice.
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| The Blockley courtyard as it appeared in 1900. |
A Confession of Carelessness
William Walter, the attendant, admitted that autopsies were conducted in a haphazard manner inside the Blockley post-mortem room, and confessed that it wasn't uncommon to find parts missing from some bodies and a surplus of parts inside others. And then he explained why.
"I generally collect all the parts that belong to the bodies, and when I come to the last one, if there is anything left over, I put it in there," he explained to the Inquirer."There are times when three post-mortems are going on at the same time and the intestines are put on wooden platters until examined by the chief." The reporter then asked Walter if he personally had sewn organs inside bodies they didn't belong to.
"That's just as I say," he replied. "When I come to the last body, if there are any pieces left over I put them in." But the newspaper reporter specifically wanted to know about the case of Morris Foster.
William Walter nervously looked at Chief Resident Wells before answering. "I could not say positively that all the parts belonging to Foster were put into his body," he admitted.
"Have you any idea why the kidneys and spleen were not replaced?" asked the reporter.
"No, sir," replied the attendant. As the interview ended, Dr. Wells, who, as chief resident, had the authority to influence, if not modify, the hospital's post-mortem procedures, expressed disgust over the whole affair.
"Common feeling for humanity would prevent these people from continuing such practices," he lamented as he walked the Inquirer reporter to the door.
The mismanaged post-mortem room and the careless desecration of dead bodies were hot topics of conversation around the city of Philadelphia that week, with several physicians variously lambasting or defending the practice. Some called for a formal investigation, while others merely shrugged. And some even suggested that sticking leftover parts inside the abdominal cavity of another corpse was the morally correct thing to do, as this would at least ensure a proper burial in consecrated ground. Others maintained that it was the only practical solution.
"When we have an unclaimed body and a post-mortem is made on it, it is dissected and specimens are removed for future enquiry," explained Dr.W.H. Parrish, a member of the obstetrical staff at Blockley. "These organs are labeled and retained for some time, and when there is no further use for them they are placed in another body as the most expeditious means of burying them." Dr. Parrish believed that it would be unwise to leave a disemboweled corpse on an autopsy table until the specimens had been thoroughly examined, which, in the case of a poisoning investigation, might require several days until all the necessary tests could be performed.
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| An autopsy being performed at Blockley, circa 1889. |
If the procedure at Blockley Hospital was abhorrent and improper, as many argued, then what was the solution? After all, it would be decades before commercial refrigeration became readily available, and morgues still had to rely upon deliveries from the local ice man. Meanwhile, the city of Philadelphia was booming thanks to immigration and manufacturing. Between 1860 and 1900, the population of Philadelphia had more than doubled; by the time Morris Foster was admitted as a patient, more than a million souls lived in the City of Brotherly Love. And, unfortunately, thousands of them were destined to wind up in places like Blockley. As long as the city continued to grow, there would be more botched and careless autopsies. Hospital administrators, however, vowed to make changes.
On July 24, the post-mortem procedures were addressed during the monthly meeting of the Bureau of Charities, which oversaw the Blockley Hospital and Almshouse. A resolution was adopted empowering Superintendent George Roney to make the proper changes to prevent another occurrence of a case like Morris Foster's. Roney responded by putting up signs in the hospital morgue strictly prohibiting physicians from performing more than one post-mortem examination at a time. In addition, parts removed from one body were required to be removed from the vicinity before another body was brought into the room.
The Evolution of Blockley
Blockley was established in 1835, when the Philadelphia Almshouse was relocated to a spot known as the "Blockley Farm" in present-day West Philadelphia. The original facility consisted of a hospital, orphanage, poorhouse and insane asylum. Although its name was eventually changed to the Philadelphia Hospital, it was still referred to as "Old Blockley" well into the early 1900s, when the mentally ill were moved to Byberry State Hospital.
Like many institutions of the era, Blockley experienced its share of tragedies and scandals; an accidental fire in the female wing of the insane asylum resulted in the deaths of 18 women, and allegations of inmate abuse were rampant until the WW1 era, when the facility was renamed the Philadelphia General Hospital. In time, the original buildings were replaced by newer buildings, and today the site of the old Blockley Farm is occupied by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania Health System and the Penn Museum. In 2001, more than one thousand bodies of the city's unknown poor were disinterred from the almshouse potter's field and reburied at nearby Woodlands Cemetery.