Transcripts For CSPAN3 Lectures 20240703

This is. Well, good afternoon, everybody. Im glad to see that were all alive. Well, you all have survived. Now, seven weeks of american history, death, dying in us history. Weve reached week seven. Im Stephen Berry your host for all things morbid today. Not any grimmer than any other day in this class. Were to be talking about the history of investigation, the evolution of, the system of Death Investigation, United States, which really matures and comes of age and about the dawn of the 20th century. So it is a 19th century story of how Death Investigation becomes forensic and ultimately becomes the csi series. Now, we all have a pretty lurid, i think, of Death Investigation thats by local news, right . This graphic is everywhere. I found a million of these. All right. Tape and chalk outnd sopolice we have a very lurid sense of death ination from the if it bleeds, it leads school of journalism in the United States. But im going to take the evolution of this system very seriously and talk about how its developed over time, starting with its historical importance. Now, the most obvious area in which Death Investigation is critically important is to criminal justice system. And this is the most familiar aspect, im sure of Death Investigation in. The United States coroners and medical examiners, right participate from the very of any death investigate and right. They are there on the scene they pronounce a cause of death that sets the entire investigation motion and then theyre there with death and Death Investigation throughout the process until the very when they may in fact, testify at trial. Now, we imagine having a Society Without Death Investigation and its role in the criminal justice system. It would be anarchy. Any one of those movies, right. Where for a single day they decide that all laws are off and you can get away with whatever can get away with. Thats essentially what society would be. We would have murders begetting killings and an endless cycle because wed have no referees, arbiters or experts to create something approximates fairness consequences and precision in our legal system. So this is the very, very familiar fear aspect of death. Investigate in the United States, the role it serves in the criminal justice system. I want to call attention to two other key roles that death investigators played throughout history apart from the criminal justice. And these are less appreciated. I think the first is in Public Health and death. Investigators are a critical component to our Public Health system. And throughout our history. The coroner and the medical have been on the front line and with many of our most mortal threats raising the alarm and uncovering correlations in epidemics no one else has seen. You have to imagine, right . As i think too happens, theyre in a basement. Morbid, dank, little place, doing their work. And yet whats washing across their examining right day after day, week, week, month after month, year after year. The rest of us may, in a life see a death or two. They see hundreds. And so theyre the first to sort of see pat urns or shifts and how people are going out of the world. So they are the ones who sound the alarm. And ill just give you a couple examples, but you could multiply them a thousand fold. Its really the coroners at the turn of the 20th century who are calling attention to all the industrial acts events that we see as industrialization proceeds, our major cities. So in pittsburgh, 1907, its coroners who the charge against us steel who has seen a rash accidents that they dont want. Right the corporation itself doesnt want to advertise this fact its the coroners and the Mayors Office who are seeing these things and leading the charge for improvements in industrial safety the same thing is true you guys might familiar with this 1911 a horrific fire at the triangle shirtwaist Factory Company where 137 young women die, some of them of the flames and others had perished from leaping out of the eighth storey of that building as. It was set on fire. Nobody tells that story from the perspective of the coroners who really led charge. Theyd seen the damage theyd seen this time and, time again, well before this one factory fire, theyd been dealing this phenomenon. They were finally fed up. And so in 1911, they the ones who lead the charge for industrial safety around the areas of factory fires, another example in 1924 in newark, new jersey, its a pathologist performing autopsy who discovers that the paint that theyre using on watch dials. Right so it a Great Innovation in its day your watch dial would be painted with this radium paint and would therefore glow. But the way the workers worked with their brushes. They would always point the brush so that they could get a fine enough line of paint so. Theyre constantly dipping this brush across their tongue that has had this radium on it. Theyre dying of necrosis, the jaw anemia and other problems. And its really, again, the coroners who see not just one rate my daughter dies mysterious circumstances but thats one instance its the coroner who sees tens dozens of these kinds of cases and starts to see a pattern and starts to figure out what is in fact going on more examples, theyre the first ones for Traffic Safety laws. Everybody gets first car, right. Theyre overjoyed. They hit the and then they hit a tree pretty shortly thereafter. So as soon as you have in the 1930s, youre starting to have massive accidents there. Cars that are not well versed for safety, there are no stop signs. There are no traffic lights. And so your seeing more and more traffic fatalities and you know, its one case here or there for, those who experienced it firsthand. But again, for the coroner, its happening in mass. And so here is a new york medical examiner, 1938 sorry, 1931, our greatest source of to life and limb today is the operation of the automobile or a wisconsin coroner. In 1930, more lives were lost in milwaukee over the past five years from automobiles then all the acute contagious diseases combined. So you get this right that the coroners like the in the coal mine right there theyre the ones who really see the dangers that are at us as they come at us. Ill just give you a few more examples that were interesting to me. The coroners the first ones to raise the alarm about needle sharing. Its this crazy 1933 case of heroin addicts in new york city who are getting malaria. But again, theyre the first ones to see the pattern, theyre the first ones to see an epidemic of child abuse and, spousal abuse among the working class in the industrializing city. Theyre the first to sound the alarm about sids. Theyre the ones who discovered a sudden death syndrome. And to see it as a as a pattern, just more and more babies dying for. No, apparently. Good reason they sound the alarm about aids again. You can imagine these kinds of things, right . They get these cases where the if its sharing. Right. They all wait. They all seem to addicts as i make my investigation they have these track marks. I wonder if they have malaria. This is kind of a curious what could be going on here. The same thing with aids in the body. Theyre cocaine related homicides and the drug wars of the eighties. Its the coroners who are saying, whoa, this is a raft of violence that i havent seen in my time here before. What is is going on the case that were most familiar with. Right, will smith is in a new movie about concussions, football. And thats based on a real path. Who worked at an allegheny hospital in pittsburgh and started to diagnose brain damage and repeated to the head in american players and has become sort of a cause celebre. So this is that role that isnt that lurid. Police line chalk outline kind of sense of what how important that investigation is to Public Health, seeing patterns, raising alarm about as our evolves, what new dangers there that we need to that we need to deal with and in a related area in diagnostics and because they work with corpses, not patients. The truth is investigators have really never gotten i think the of credit they deserve for their in Public Health or the respect that they deserve from their medical. But the truth is they, make their medical peers better. And this has been true throughout history. Ill just give you one example here at the turn of the 20th century Massachusetts General Hospital made a major push to had all of its patients autopsied this is the first time that a hospital said okay everybody dies in this hospital is going to go down and have an autopsy and were going see if the clinician was right as centrally so. The clinician said, this person, madam, you have died of a and then the coroner said, no, no, no. And so they uncover just how massively awful their clinicians were terms of diagnostics. And so what they said is, oh, this has to go. The other way every one as part of their medical education has to do autopsy sees and has to see these kinds of things firsthand. So they paid and played an Important Role in improving medical diagnostics, especially the role of the autopsy, which is just the start, right, of the panoply of in their tool kit, as science evolved over the course of the 19th century to produce by the turn of the 20th century, our day medical examiner now. Okay, im going to just going to walk through some of these pretty quickly at a conceptual conceptual level, right . The autopsy has been around forever. Like that first neanderthal has neanderthal drops dead and the guy is poking him with a and wondering what he died of. Dude. I mean, thats thats been around essentially forever. They did an autopsy on caesar, right they discovered that it was actually that second stab that was the coup de gras, as they called it, like, you know, but they had 20, 23 blows totals. So its like a guy did i. And so autopsies have around forever but again its their systematic use that i think changes the two possible candidates for the father of the modern autopsy are there on the right hand side of the screen, one is karl rockatansky for two, 1878. He presided over the Pathology Institute at the alga mine, kronk and house in vienna, which really the hub of medical science at the time. And so he had access to a ton and a ton of cases. And when i say a ton i mean, wow. 70,000 autopsies he supervised 30,000 autopsies he performed himself over the course of career. He averaged two a day, seven days a week for 45 years. That a ton in a ton of autopsies. And what did was perfected again as system how do we do it the same every time so we dont introduce any so we can ensure reproducible results and to be honest his theory was bad. He hated microscopy so he hated to use the microscope. So he was actually in terms of diagnosing diseases and pathologies that kill people. Hes actually that great. But in terms of system, the autopsy and sort of publicizing it, making it an important part, he played a key role. Rudolf virchow, 1821 to 1902, maybe even more important as, the eminent father of the modern autopsy. Hes a german pathologist, basically the hub of knowledge in the 19th Century Moves from vienna to berlin because of their. Hes the one who really seals the deal on the case that cellular pathology is the cause of disease. You guys will remember this probably parker ts and galen all thought that when we had diseases it our humerus right that were out of balance we had these four humans and theyre circulate throughout our and thats why they draw blood right is to sort of reestablish balance hes like thats garbage because he is he worships the microscope he loved it. So in addition to doing autopsies he brought the microscope very much to the center of Death Investigation so he deserves think to be called the father of the modern autopsy. Ill just say both of these things come to the United States fairly quickly. In the 19th century, the most influential theyre not depicted here is this guy. So william osler, hed studied with both of these men, and then he came to canada and then ultimately to the United States, where he becomes the most respected and, revered north american physician of his time. He not only performed autopsies, taught people to do sort of made it the cause celebre in medicine and of himself. He told a friend, ive been this case, meaning his own case for two months, and im sorry that i shall not see the postmortem. Thats how committed. He was to autopsies that he wasnt going to be able to do his own, which he would have more than anything else. To his credit. He was right everything that was wrong with them when they did an autopsy on him. And sure enough, he was in fact right about that. So autopsy had been around forever. But what im talking about, when does it become systematized systematized . Part of Forensic Science and medicine again, thats turn of the 20th century. Same thing with the lungs that actually been forever. Does anybody know what that is . Okay. This is going to more. But i talked about that already. So in the case of a baby who was born and you want to figure out if the mother has committed infanticide or if the baby was born dead, what you would do is you would take the lungs of the baby and you would submerge them in water. And the idea was if the baby had drawn breath right then the lungs would aerated, and so they would float on the surface of the water if. The baby had never drawn a breath and it had born stillborn. Then the lungs would actually sing. You can do the same thing with drowning victims, see if if theyve drowned because theyve taken so much water into their lungs right along. Should sink as opposed to float. Theyve been doing that since 1681. In the case of infanticide. Now, we dont rely on this that much anymore, to be honest. Theyve proven that it inaccurate in at least 2 of cases. This is to get even more gross if the as the body decomposes right gases are released. Thats the bloating that you see for instance, in a civil war corpse, same thing is true in a babys lungs. So if the corpse is decaying. Then there the lungs will essentially have gases in them that will have them float. And so its not great. 2 isnt bad for that era in terms of, you know, a degree of error, unless youre one of the women. Right. Who was convicted of infanticide, then that 2 doesnt look very good at all. Bloods faint. This is bloodstain pattern analysis is sort of what dexter makes of famous. 8 of our weight is blood. So we have five liters of blood in us and it runs very close to the surface. So any time you have a trauma right, youre going to release blood. And it has all these residues in it that make it very, very difficult to clean again, you can imagine, you know, blood stains been used for death, investigation for time out of mind. Oh, this guy was killed here. He was dragged over here. Hey, that guy blood on his hands. That isnt what were talking about here with the splatter analysis and typing, blood typing comes of age in 1907. So the a, the b, the ab, the o, all of that is in 1907. They come up with these blood tests. They use them for paternity. As you can imagine. Does that make it or not make it . But they also use it in Death Investigation and then the epa, the blood stain pattern analysis, thats 1895. It goes back far that you have your first scientific papers focus specifically on how blood, how quickly it dries, whether arterial blood is a little brighter, and then the splatter analysis, what kind of motion produces, what kind of results in the blood stain on the wall . Fingerprints, too, goes way but systematized at the turn of the 20th century. So they used to sign ancient contracts in babylon. You would stick your in the clay tablets that the contract is chiseled into right so they and even in the 1200s they knew that fingerprints were in asia at least they knew fingerprints were totally unique and they would use them in Death Investigation but it didnt come immediately to the United States until after 1902. Theres this very famous case called the schaeffer case which this guy murdered, someone in his apartment, and then busts a glass cabinet door open and he leaves a partial print on one of the shards. And so they can prove its a partial right that it was left after the glass had been broken. It wasnt there before. It wasnt print that had been broken in half. It essentially hed only put his finger on part of it. And its the first case, 1902 in france, where they convict on the basis of fingerprint analysis. Juries were slow, accept it. As you can imagine. You people had never really thought about fingerprints, but it moved to the united pretty quickly. By 1906 in new york, basically their fingerprinting criminal that comes through new york city and making cases on the basis, fingerprints, other examples, the blood alcohol content test, death investigators pioneered the test, and then the breathalyzer, which comes way earlier than you would guess even today, 30 of traffic fatalities probably have something to do with alcohol in the 1950s and 66, 50 . Its probably higher than that before. And so having a alcohol test and a breathalyzer test, unbelievably critical. That picture of the his or her breathalyzer test, nothing more romantic as from 1927, an issue of science and invention. So you have all of these guys crazily running to create a great patent for their breathalyzer test even forensic dentistry goes way back and becomes stabilized. Around 1900. The first case of using forensic in court. This is just absolutely crazy. Its the salem trials. There is a guy, the reverend George Burroughs is accused of witchcraft. Their evidence is that he is biting all of these people. And, of course, these people are probably biting themselves and just accusing him. But they admit this and use it in the court hes convicted, hes hung later they say, im sorry. You know, to his kids and and pay them but so its an ignominious early form of bite mark analysis and forensic dentistry. But we all know by the 1870s, right, forensic dentistry and dental records are a key part of murder investigations. So all of this comes of age in 1900. And i you to see the historical importance the coroners and ems have played in our public system in diagnostic and the Forensic Science that, the tool kit that they developed over, that period that said there have been some real problems with our Death Investigation system in the United States given, its importance granting all due respect for its successes we have a deeply flawed system of Death Investigation in the United States now modern day ems and coroners, they operate in a very environment. Its not always clear if they have Legal Authority to do an autopsy against the interests of the family. Theyve got prosecutors, their demands. Theyve got oregon specialists sitting either side. Is he dead yet . Is he dead yet . Theyve got tough calls to about euthanasia, assisted suicide. I understand coroners, modern modern day medical examiners work in a difficult environment they have a rich history of and incompetence. Think about. Its flipping important Death Investigation is it means that whoever controls the Coroners Office controls the justice system. The wheels of justice dont turn until the coroner some kind of pronouncement about a cause of death and sets those wheels in motion. So if you dont want those wheels, move, buy off the. So heres a great case. In the 1950s a man was found bobbing biscayne bay blindfolded with a knife in his back and the coroner ruled it a suicide. But right. You can just imagine the mob bosses who could control a coroner, the investigation into, this death would never get started. Even if coroners didnt stoop that low. Right. You can imagine they routinely kickbacks for steering bodies to particular undertakers. You can imagine they get money for releasing crime scene photo shows and other bits, nastiness from their own exam tables. And this is the bit, quite frankly it wasnt until 1968 that we had the uniform anatomical gift act which said that coroners and ems couldnt take anything of the body before, was put in the ground and until 1968. So were of all familiar with the ghouls as were called the grave robbers in the early 19th century, who would steal whole bodies for uses at the medical college. And we know that practice went out of favor, but the degree to which they used organs from dead bodies to do pathology tests. Theres a great deal of that. All the way through 1968, there was a mass of trade in Human Growth Hormone you get from the pituitary gland. We would never be able to do this. But if you dig tons and tons of bodies that were before 1968, i wonder many of them have their pituitary glands, quite frankly, because of the coroners make all kinds of money selling them on the black market. Just some examples. A dallas m. E. In the 1940s was in the habit of dropping babies on their heads to learn about injury patterns. Theyre doing this in the of science. In this case, but theyre doing it without the consent of the parents. A tacoma, washington forensic pathologist routinely stabbed to try to develop. He was writing a paper on knife wounds essentially again to advance science at a milwaukee m. E. In the 1930s, collected the testicles from the dead to test theories about heroin use and sterility and none of that. It was illegal. Prior to 1968. So at the end of the class. Right. Well read mary roachs book stiff and ill ask you at the end of that class whether were a better place now, whether you would vote to donate your body science. She writes a lot about where if you donate your body to science, one possibility not inevitable, and you can avoid this, but one possibility is that your decapitated head will be used to test lipstick and that counts as having donated your body to science. So there are some problems with and interest in our Death Investigation and problems of incompetence to death investigate even in the United States is one of the least professionalized least standardized areas of american medicine. This issue actually bubbles to the surface every once a while. And then we just sort of tampa back down and pretend not to notice. Im just going to walk you through a few high profile for a Death Investigation. The United States starting their with John F Kennedy right. There is probably no autopsy that has been met with greater derision than kennedys. He was taken not to anywhere in dallas after he was shot. He was taken to bethesda Naval Hospital, a, because he was a navy man. Right. And his wife thought they would treat his body with greater dignity and. Maybe they did. But there are Naval Hospital right there. Not accustomed to dealing with gunshot wounds of any kind, much less the president of the United States with a wound of this nature. And then theyve got secret service people, the Kennedy Family is around. They got a lot wrong. They thought there were only two bullets. They couldnt the wound track with two Navy Hospital pathologists operating in a confused and tense environment, it is a wonder the autopsy report turned out as good as did, which wasnt very good. Was the official finding of the warren commission. You guys wont remember this because you werent alive. But i remember this that Michael Jordan, of course. One of the greatest athletes of all time. Theres a famous phrase. Michael jordan is, better at basketball than anyone has ever been at anything like you can just compare apples and oranges if you would did that for a minute he was absolutely fantastic and he was very, very close with his father. And so his father murdered in 1993 in marble county, South Carolina. Marble county, South Carolina, had a the coroner, the official coroner for marble county, South Carolina was a part time and part Time Construction worker. He said he didnt have enough in the fridge for this very, unfortunately, decomposed body. Hed been basically carjacked his body had been thrown into a swamp where it decomposed so he didnt have anywhere to store it. So he just put it in the oven. Now, fortunately, he saved the teeth im not even quite sure why, but this became a major investigation, as you can imagine. 1993, Michael Jordan was, i dont know, one of the greatest stars on the planet and the loss of his father was real black eye for pathology in the United States the coroner in this case i just love this quote said i guess ive done for the coroners what Tonya Harding did for figure skating it was yes just a disaster and ripped from the headlines is antonin scalia. Who quite frankly, probably should have had an autopsy given high profile his cases. Guy had all kinds of health problems. It is old he was way overweight. He was he had all kind of risks. Im sure a heart attack is probably claimed his life. But the like with kennedy, the conspiracy theories that follow the wake of failing to do any kind of analysis is a problem. So you guys know the story, right . This is very recent. He was hunting at a Little Mexican border town on a remote ranch. He was found dead. The ranch owner who said, we discovered the judge in bed, a pillow, his head and. Then what happens . Its a remote texas ride. And again, its texas. So dont actually they dont fly him over. They take him to emir. He was pronounced with a cause of death by phone essentially because thats the way our system works. It has all of holes in it. And then once trump hears about this. He says its a horrible topic, but they say they found a pillow on his face, which is a pretty unusual place to a pillow. And then michael savage, the conservative radio host, this is going to be bigger and bigger and bigger. We need equivalent of a warren commission. Essentially the notion that Supreme Court justice has been snuffed out with a pillow over face. None of that would happen if. We had a standardized system of Death Investigation. These are just the high profile disasters, quite frankly. We dont have a system thats part of the problem. As late as 2009 and its report, strengthening Forensic Science in the United States, a path forward, the National Academy of Science Sciences lamented Death Investigation in the United States is, fragmented, deficient hodgepodge and disjointed. And the reason, as i say, is we dont have a system. What we essentially have is the medical whos goals should be arent always justice and science overly on top of a much, much older system. The system of the coroner and its the system of the coroner they want to talk for the rest of our lecture today. Now i dont want to turn coroners into the villains of this story thats not my point many of the advancements that i laid out at beginning at the triangle shirtwaist factory, all that those were coroners who discovered. They were on the front lines of our Public Health and discovered these real threats to us and came so i dont at all want to slight them. I do want to say im an historian, so i want talk about whats in their dna. That is to say the Coroners Office going way back for time out of mind is not interested in justice or science, which we would hope they would be. Its always been interested in something else, something approximating that but not exactly the same. So does anybody know where the word coroner comes from. Coroner thats latin for crown. Yeah. So in in hamlet, right. They call the coroner. A coroner, essentially. Hes a representative of king of oak. So what you could do is back, way back into england and youve got the sheriff right of nottingham whos squeezing the peasants and taking all of their money and none of that money is going up to the king. So the king invents the coroner. The king essentially needs someone who can go around the sheriff and make sure that revenue is running where it ought, which is to the kings coffers. So think of the coroner, essentially the kings vulture. So this sort of flying around and whenever theres a dispute or problem, the vulture descends to see if were whoa, whoa, someone must represent the kings here and make sure that he gets his end. Well, what would that have to do with deaths whenever you have a death rate property is loosed from its legal mooring. Is this guy a taxpayer . Does he owe money . Who does he owe money to did commit suicide if he committed suicide, thats a crime against religion. The king seizes the estate. Heres the craziest one. If found a dead norman on the village commons, they assessed a tax on the whole village called the murder room, which where we get the word murder. It comes from this very ancient system of the car. Wherever you a coroner, you see the english imprint. Things didnt go this way in france. And germany and other places, they a medical Examiner System much earlier only in places have the british imprint. British colonies or britain itself. Do you. The office of the coroner. Okay so one of the things id like to suggest is that the coroner is really creature of the state instead of the thinking of the coroner or someone, the side of justice or on the side of science. And thats whats evolving in that period, really just a creature of the state. If the state is on the side of justice, if the is on the side of science, rather than the coroner might be there, too, if the state has other interests that its protecting or other preoccupations, then the coroner will be the tool of those interests and captured by those preoccupations. And here we arrive at our assignme for the coming weeks to illustrate the point that ive just made that the coroner is not in his or her dna. The origs of the office is not necessarily in science and juste, but in the terests of the state. Were going to do a little object lesson by doing a deep dive into the coroners reports from the 19th century south using csi, which you can find at Seaside Heights dot org what this site does takes 1582 inquests that were done in South Carolina between, 1819 hundred. It digitizes them that is you can read a trance you can you can read the original record but it also data files. What is this, a homicide . Was this a suicide . Was this an accidental death . All of that. Okay. Just to get a sense of what they look like, what youll see as you get into assignment. These are the coroners reports. As i first came across them when i was at the south department of archives and history, you guys know im one morbid dude, right . I have fixated on death since i was a little kid and i think i was always destined to open this box of coroners reports in South Carolina. The minute i opened it. I was just, how many are in here. Its all endings, right . Ill know nothing. The noon of any of these lives, like the happy moments and all of these lives perfectly lost to me. I only know the. And every time i pick it up, it doesnt end well, right . They end different. They do. They all end the same. And for this moment. Right, i figured thats true of all of us. Well all end different. We all and the same. Nobodys ever escaped mortality. And so in that moment, in meeting room in the South Carolina department of archives and history, it was like as po would have it death was looking gigantically down and i could feel i was going. Everyone in the reading room floor, we were all making our varied ways to the grave, just like everybody else in this box. And i became fixated by them. And thats part of why i put this project together. And why am i inflicting it upon you so that you can become fixated on them to hear you see their the business with the state right. So this is the state versus the dead body of alec slave property of hb english. Just a weird way of writing it. And even in legal terms, right . When you commit murder, you dont commit the murder against a person, you commit the murder against, the peace and dignity of the state. So the state, its not money anymore, but the state has an interest that its protecting in of these cases to some degree, the rule of law. Okay. So this is how i found them. They were just sort of a jumbled little mass tri folded little bundles, a bunch of endings. Now weve 1582 of them that you guys are going to jump into. Let me just show how they work so that you wont get confused when youre actually working on the assignment. Every one of them has what i call a cover sheet, kind of. Its not like it doesnt look a form, but its pretty well standardized and standardized by law. So in this case, its the state of South Carolina. Kershaw, a district which is South Carolina was districts, then it became counties and inquisition indented. That means taken in the woods near william gardners. And it always starts with that. So an inquest has take place where the body lives. Youre not supposed to move it. Youre supposed to leave it there. So in this case, inquest is taking place. The woods near william gardners, you always get a date. The fourth day of january in the year of, our lord, 1817. You get a coroner. In this case, hes a justice of the quorum. I wont even get into what that is. You got a dead guy. In this case, the body of alexander mckee. You get the jurors in this case, right . White men, all white men, 12 white men and you get this phrase, which i became sort addicted to finding. And every one of these do say upon their oaths, do say upon i became a sort of rhapsody thing for me, because that was always my that somebody is walking out. In this case, mickey became deranged, insane. He escaped from his family. He died of exposure. This is an era in which. Right. They dont. They would routinely people with problems at home and so theyd essentially lock their loved one up and he escaped i guess like theres no like mental rife right. Take care and stuff. Right. So so in 1817 where youll start to see South Carolina and other places reform movements for penitentiary facilities for the dumb blind, insane, other kinds of improvements, but not in 1817. You had to take care of it at home. And in this case, as i say, he escaped and died of exposure. So thats just the cover sheet. And its its mostly boilerplate legalese, but it does give you some data. But what saying is its a trifle little bundle. Thats just one of the pages in a typical coroners report in this case. What you have a dissenting opinion what i call the minority report. So in this case, a guy named gino, this is in south had been charged to take a slave to the slave jail essentially the slave was injured and couldnt walk fast enough. And so gino lashed chain around his neck and dragged him until he was dead. And 11 jurors said, oh and this guy was like, are you kidding . Undoubted, theyre racist. Undoubtedly in support of slavery. But he thought that there were some boundaries at least. And so writes this in minority rert and you get the testimony of women and slaves they cant testify at trial but they can testify here before a coroners inquest. So in this case, its out right by the coroner himself or another white man. So its testimony that moves through white patriarchy to be document it, but its at least version of what happens. So get cases where an inquest jury and the finds that a slave woman died of apoplexy but her daughter says my mom was hit with a shovel so we get traces of what really happened in these inquest files and and you get some of the poor whites of the antebellum south. In this case, every one of these people are making. Mark, i just want you to be familiar with that. So this is william hall. Cant actually write his name. The coroners written his name for him and then his mark and then he just put an x right. And that all of these theyre all white men, but theyre all illiterate in this case. So get much more evidence than just the cover sheet in one of these inquest. We dont really what an inquest look like. Theyre not. Many people have left us descriptions of it was like to be in an inquest. This is nothing we do now right . We dont. So somebody dies and you leave the body there for a long time and then you get 12 people to stand over it and then call in other people to sort of, oh, yeah, i saw that guy walk past me, you know, 2 hours ago or whatnot. We just dont do it that way. They did it that way and i actually this is a cartoon from 1826 and i actually think its pretty good at getting at what an inquest was like you wont be able to read this one of the jurors says mans alive sir for he has opened one eye and the coroners sir the doctor declared him dead to our sense and he must remain dead, sir. So shall proceed with the inquest. So whats going on here . What do you notice. Whos guy . Probably. So. This guy probably owns the house. This is you have to be able to decode the way they would draw things in 19th century. Well, wellfed, well warmed, clearly high class given wig and whatnot. His cowering dog. So this is this guy is the homeowner. These guys code for lower class theyre the jurors of inquest they always would write them with repulsive faces and just of you know the unkempt hair so guys are poorer and so what see here is sort of overlapping layers of authority in this one really cramped space. So theres the authority of the state, right. Whos sort of brought them all here to discover or if someone has murdered against the peace and dignity of the state, you get medical authority in, the form of the doctor who has already made his pronouncement. This is actually a religious figure. I dont know if you can see it. He has a collar religions legitimacy in heres in sort of giving meaning to our and explaining to us what we should do with our feelings when bad things happen. Why does god allow these things to happen . So theres the of religion theres actually an authority to local too so okay these guys arent as well is this guy they dont have as nice house, but they actually know that the guys not right. So they have an based on on local circumstance and then theyre sort of this authority to me at least of death itself, because theyre all crammed into this one space and theyre really facing death together. And the intimate place. So i want you to remember that when youre working on your assignment, that inquest was the product of this cultural process of, grappling with death and coming to some kind conclusion. These guys. Right. Are probably not interested exactly in science or injustice per. Se they have a more supple sense of things. This is a book by one of my friends, Laura Edwards at duke the people and their piece legal and the transformation of inequality in the postrevolutionary south, which is sort of think about this book as youre working on your inquests her argument is essentially. That what was most important in this period was the peace not justice. What the peace whatever was true yesterday and should be true tomorrow. So when you have a death, you have a rift in the peace. And those 12 men, 13 men, they are essentially trying come to some sort of satisfactory and return us the peace. So state level law gets made. But at the county level, you have the coroners inquest. Their life is much more supple. Laws are often ignored and thats women and slaves can she suggests, because its not exactly a legal proceeding or a judicial proceeding. Its a proceeding of the community to restore order to the community. So women and slaves in an inquest because they know what was true yesterday and what should maybe be true tomorrow. And so its very different than our sense of right. The fbi, the Sheriffs Office, all of these people whose, whole function is to compel us to obey the law. This is a different sort of endeavor altogether suggesting, okay. I want to sort of aggregate. Those 1582 cases for us to just give you a sense what i learned from doing from this a lot, all of those try for the little bundles. What came out of that massive box to tell you the what came is what i should have known before i started and what a social worker would have told in 2 seconds. So i did of this work. I did the ties, 1582 cases, a day to find all of it to okay like a social worker would come to me and said okay tell about this place. And i said, well its a land of massive rural. Its a land where most whites are radically underemployed its a land of ramps, alcoholism, and its a land where they teach nobody to swim, where there are no social services, where there no treatment for addiction, where there is no access to birth control. And she or he would have told me, okay, im going to tell you exactly what itll look like from morgue. They dont teach their kids to swim, so theyre going to drown. They have no access to birth control. Youre going to have massive numbers of unwanted pregnancies. So youre going to have a massive number of dead babies. You massively angry, underemployed fathers. Youre going to have a decimating amount of spousal abuse and child and youre going have souls so desperate that will hang themselves before theyll live in that world anymore. And so what i now know if you were a white male in spartanburg county, South Carolina, between 40 and 1880, and a coroner standing above your body, how did you die die. A combination of alcohol and stupidity. So we have this idea, right, of the old south, particularly as this place of knife fights and gouging and dueling. Its so much than that. If you were a white, female, spartanburg county, South Carolina, same period coroner standing above your body. How did you die . You hung yourself. If you were an African American male, you hung yourself and werent hung by somebody else. So its a land, no social services. Its a place where white men are drinking and their dependents to death. Its actually a land of massive rural poverty and inequality. And thats the way people go out of the in such a place. Okay. Your assignment is going to be to write one inquest as a story. Take it as a starting point and it to tell me something about life and death in the 19th century south. So you just take one case and you try to peel like an onion, tell its story, but also try to branch out and to give you an exam pool. Im going to end with one story told from csi dixie and inquest. There it is the story of the deaths of james cook moses parkes allen attaway, david phillips, Hampton Stevens and albert minyard in hamburg, South Carolina, in 1876. So is where well end with this one story from a set of inquests in the seaside case that this map i know probably hard for you all to see. Hamburg is right here. It is directly across the Savannah River from agusta just. If you can orient yourself to agusta, youre practically in hamburg. Hamburg directly across the way. So here the Savannah River, which is rolling down to the sea here, and here is the port at one of the most important cities in the antebellum south. So hamburg had been settled in 1820 by henry schultz, who named the town after the famous city. Right. And his native germany. It quickly a hub of wagon traffic would come here pulling cotton from the interior of the south at first in 1820. Right. We dont railroads yet most of that cotton then going by river Savannah River to ports here then carried to charleston and by by. So thats. 1820. By 1825 they build this hamburg to Charleston Railroad and is the b. A. Right . Is a famous common carrier, the baltimore and ohio railroad. If you look on wikipedia right now, it will say that it was the longest common carrier in the United States. Now everybody forgets about the hamburg to charleston line chartered. In 1827. It was the Worlds Largest rate of railroad and its completion in 1833. In its heyday, thousand bales of cotton worth 2 million moved through hamburg each year. Yeah, and im guessing like this area that prior to that had a lot wagon traffic. Yeah. Economically depressed. Yeah. It was like no more, right. Well and, and thats what well see. Especially afterward. What happens to hamburg is that it becomes a spur town. Right. Yre familiar with where the railroad essentially goes around it or finds another rou. And so by 1876, hamrg is a ghost town essentially. And what you have after the civil is africanamericans specialized in these places, the problem if youre africanamerican after the civil war, its part of it is real estate. What estate do you actually own . None. 40 acres and a mule. Forget about you. Dont you dont anything. And so were sort of all familiar with the degree to which the Church Becomes the center of its not just religious life, but political life and civic life part of it is a real estate problem. Thats the one building they have. Thats the one building they own. And so it becomes the and a rec center and a political incubator and a place where people gather. It is everything to them. So when theyre firebombing churches, theyre doing more than attacking just the spirit of the Africanamerican Community. Its a real estate problem. So anyway, africanamericans specialized in these depressed little towns because theyve been great, right . But now theyre totally left behind a ghost town. You could buy this real estate relatively cheap and you can erect an africanamerican where you can safeguard yourself your and your community. So thats what hamburg is. By 1876, it essentially has 600 residents. A fifth of them are white. A fifth of them are fine, living in a majority community. Theyre like, this is great. I like hamburg. So heres the story that would tell about hamburg in 1876. So july four, 1876, right its the 100 year birthday of the United States and the president of the United States, Ulysses Grant tells so what shall we do . Celebrate . Well, every town should a parade, which means a sort of militia march, and they should write the towns history and they should read the declaration of independence. And well sort of collect all those town. And itll be a biography of america. And this is going to be a great so thats the idea. July four, 1876. Remember majority africanamerican town. They have an African American militia. Their guns are terrible they have no bullets. Doesnt matter. Theyre marching. Theyre a good time. They have read the declaration of independence and theyre marching here in the Center Square of the African American town of hamburg, which they have bought with their own money. And right here is a wagon with two boys in it, a guy named tommy butler. Henry gets in and. Theyre watching these guys march under their militia. Captain. A guy named doc adams. And this is witness who remembered them marching were most equal to any company, white or colored, no matter where they came from. Adams militia captain had them welldrilled. That was the great fault. So henry gets an and tommy butler actually belonged to the butler. To get there, they have to come across the river from augusta where theyve done whatever by wagon and then loop around to the their fathers plantation, which is over here. So theyre constantly to come through hamburg on their way to augusta and from their plantation and its driving them crazy. This is such a successful african town is driving them crazy probably these are black men with guns that theyre so wellordered, welldrilled and theyre so happy. On july four, 1876, this represents everything that they dont want to see the history of the United States. So they drive their wagon directly into the parade. They easily have gone around. This is actually a really large field. They could have gone around just easily. They dont they drive directly directly up to the parade and. They demand that doc adams essentially disperse his militia. He says, i dont know why i would do that. I mean this is what the president of the United States had wanted all of his towns to do gets and doesnt matter this is the route i always travel which i just sort of like that mentality this the route i travel i cannot be in a new place in a new space. Think of new thought. This is the route i always travel. So dark. Adams relents and he says, open order, which is essentially make a hole they do. And then all of the militia goes home on. What had been sort of a depressing and to the 4th of july the next day tommy butler henry gets in and his father come to the Sheriffs Office at hamburg to swear out a warrant on doc adams his militia for obstructing a public road. There they meet prince. I want to tell you the story. Prince rivers is one of the more remarkable stories from hes the town just essentially the trial justice in the town. Its also the mayor of hamburg. Hes also the general of the militia. So he wears he wears a lot of hats. So they come to his office to swear this complaint. I want to just give you a little bit, a back story. This is the best picture we have of Prince Rivers. He had been born in slavery. He taught himself to read and write. He was a carriage driver. And buford, South Carolina, as soon as the civil war starts, he jumps on his carriage horse and rides to freedom. He joins the united colored troops. He becomes a sergeant. Hes attacked in new york because he has chevron owens on and even whites there dont want to see a black officer. And he more than holds his own. This guy was one tough on gray his own commander Thomas Higginson said that rivers had no theres not a white officer in this who has more administrative ability. No antislavery novel has described a man of such market ability. If his education had reached a higher point. I see no reason why he should not command the army of the potomac. And if there should ever a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king. He didnt become the king of South Carolina, we know, but he was known as the black prince. He was the power of aiken county. So edgefield county, the most unreconstructed county in South Carolina, has a county carved out of, and hes trying to make a go of interracial democracy in. Hamburg in aiken county in South Carolina, at the height of reconstruction. So hes got these angry white men who have ridiculous notion that theyre going to drag his militia captain, out to some legal bushes and the man to death, he says, well, maybe these guys are drunk or theyre hotheads or lets let cooler heads prevail. So he says, come on back a few days, ill have doc adams here. Well have some of the militia people here. Well see if we can settle this a couple days later. Matthew galbraith butler no relation, probably some relation, but you know how the south is to to the butler boys shows up at prince Prince Rivers office. This guy is totally unreconstructed. In his first run congress, he had lost to a black man. He tried to take it out on local blacks. They burnt down his house. Utterly unamerican. As i say, this is a quote from one of his friends with all of his beautiful manners when he wanted to be, he could be the most cold blooded insulin human being that mortal eyes ever. So he he was there as general butler. I dont know if he thinks his Confederate Service isnt over. I dont know whats going on. He says hes there as the butlers lawyer, but also there as general butler. He demands that the militia come to him, that they stack their arms and those and that doc adams formally apologized to the butler boys for how they treated them on 4th of july, Prince Rivers asked if they did all would butler vouch for their safety butler said it is going to have they apologized mr. Butler, for how they treated his sons on the fourth. So. Heres situation most of the militia is holed up this is where the parade had been days before most the militia is holed up here at the armory. They maybe have 120 rounds of ammo. Their guns are really quite poor. So the gun fire, the civil war we think of as such a break, this, you know, rifled musket on the shoulder of every man in the army. But its the winchester air that Technology Comes in right after the civil war. We think of it as the gun that won the west. Its the gun that won south. So the africanamericans in their armory of 120 rounds of ammo and really crummy by comparison, the people who start flooding into hamburg coming across the bridge from augusta, many of them are carrying winchester. And there we have strong accounts that they bought the local grocer out of alcohol. So by 6 p. M. That evening, there drunk and the folks in the army armory are starting worry about whats going to happen about 6 00 they opened fire on armory. The armory returns fire. Maybe did or maybe didnt kill one guy. Mickey meriwether. He might have been killed by his own dudes. We have idea he promised earlier in the day that he was going to kill everybody in the armory and then go to heaven and kill jesus christ himself anyway. Micki meriwether falls here, all bets are off they take it, they drag a cannon across the bridge from augusta, blow a hole in the armory. Africanamerican militia men and otherwise escape out the back the armory. Many of them are captured, and theyre carried to dead ring, which is right there as it happens, we have surviving witness who is in the dead ring that day. One of the men there was a lieutenant in, the militia. Remember, doc adams controls the militia. His lieutenant is a man named Charles Attaway. He was in the dead ring and. He turned to a friend and says mays. What do you think of this. How do i ask the man sitting next to him . Jack mays had been a cook. The union army. Now, by all, he ran a gambling operation in hamburg. I dont know how to say what to think of it, mays responded. Do you think they will kill all of us . Yes, i do. I think just so, said mays. Do you think they will kill me . Attaway asked finally. I do, said mays. All youve got to do now is to god to save your soul. Just give your wife and children and everything else, for they are going to kill you with. With that, attaway hung his head and commenced crying. There was a terrific disagreement among, the whites, about just what to do. Some of them just wanted to. Theyre in a ring right around the prisoners. They just want open the ring up and turn it into a firing line and be done with it. No one white named bill robinson, who had been the son of a judge. No, no. Now, gentlemen, the way to do it is go and hold a Court Martial and whatever Court Martial determines you can do, then you can do it. And with that, a small detachment moved away from the ring. They probably consulted with general. Certainly they drew up a list at a way as gets. And remember henry in one of the boys in the wagon gets in and tommy are leaving to consult and to draw up a list and way says do all you can for me i do i begged of gets in while the Court Martial was meeting. Yes. You. I will do all i can for you. I will do in a short while. I will fix you in a short while gets in and tommy come back. How a ways is the name they call. They carry him down a low of field right there where they shoot him in the head. I come back to the ring and they do that four more times. The last they call a name pompey curry at the sound of his name. Hes up and running. He runs as fast as he can hes gunned down and presumed dead. And one of the gunmen says, what better fun do you want than that . In fact, curry hadnt been killed and. Thats the reason that we have verbatim the quotations from inside the dead ring. So what do you do the next day you convene a coroners inquest . Remember how we started our whole conversation . The wheels of justice do not until the coroner makes a present pronouncement. This is the place where africanamericans actually control the Coroners Office and civil society. And we write so many books about massacres and about lynchings. I we wrote more books about what you do the next day to pick up the pieces and in this case prince stood over the dead bodies of those men and convened the coroners inquest. Because thats what you do. And he gathers together the pages of the testimony and issues arrest warrants for 87 white men including matthew future South Carolina senator and ben tillman future South Carolina governor. That inquest of course makes it here to New York Times it doesnt make it any farther the wheels of justice turn more the straight outs as they were called, were in ascendance and reconstruction was rolling back to rivers. There were no more links in. The chain of justice, he tells his son. Joshua, who was then interviewed by the in the 1930s. He says now itll be 100 years. So we know his what they lost in hamburg it wasnt that it happened it was the government wasnt going to do anything about. Okay what happens to rivers he returns to driving carriage and to me right this is ark it isnt just the people were brutalized or killed during reconstruction and it is to take a person like rivers who could have been right in charge of the army of the potomac and taught himself to read and write had been the mayor of a town in a state legislature and all of those things. But his arc is from a carriage to a soldier to a state legislator to a mayor and to a carriage driver, again, driving white around, attired in his livery suit and tall beaver hat. So i didnt white witness. He looked like a piece of statuary so erect form was he. So what mark . What markers or memorials are on the ground . How should we remember what happened at hamburg. In 1916 . They erected a monument to the massacre to to the riot as it was described by them to mickey meriwether, the lone white who had been killed and promised kill. Jesus christ himself probably got in the crossfire. And inscribed on that monument is in life. He exemplified the highest ideal of anglosaxon civilization. By his death, he assured the children of his beloved land, the of that ideal, after which they birth of a nation and. What monument remains. To prince and all of the men of hamburg, whereas hamburg now this is what happens. Hamburg in 1911, the river floods and basically has the money and the federal pool to get the army of corps of engineers out to shore up the levees. Hamburg does not in 1929, the next flood comes through. Hamburg washes away. All that they owned all that they bought, none of it protected. All of it returned. And now known as north north augusta. And we are around the site of the hamburg massacre. This is a golf resort with very well appointed streets, houses right on the river in prime real estate. What it would have meant to the Africanamerican Community to have owned this today. How many millions of dollars might that be . I dont have anything against golf, maybe gentrification have happened. Anyway, my question is, how do we remember what markers on the land for us to remember . Heres execution site. Remember that low oak field where they shot down Charles Attaway and three others . And what is running over that site . That is the Jefferson Davis memorial highway highway. So that is just an example of the kind of story that you write from these inquests and that i hope you will write in the weeks ahead. Does anybody have any questions about . Death investigation in the United States, the Coroners Office in the 19th century south or anything else. I know its been another glum day in the history of death and dying in the United States. Ill see you all on tuesday. Thanks very much