Minutes. Good afternoon, everybody. Im glad to see that we are all alive and well. We have all survived seven weeks of American History death and dying, u. S. History. Weve reached i am stephen berry, your host for all things morbid. Today, not any grimmer than any other day. We will be talking about the history of Death Investigation, evolution of the system of Death Investigation in the United States, which really matures and comes of age at about the dawn of the 20th century. Its a 19th century story of how Death Investigation becomes Forensic Science. Ultimately, becomes the csis series. We all have a pretty lord sense that investigation provided by local news. I found 1 million of these. Its always the same, with the police tape and chalk outlines. We have a very lord sense of Death Investigation and if it leads it leads school of journalism in the United States. Im going to take the evolution of the system very seriously and talk about how it has developed over time. Starting with its historical importance, now the most obvious area in which the investigation is critically important is to our criminal Justice System and this is the most familiar aspect, i am sure of Death Investigation in the United States. Corners and medical examiners participate from the very beginning of any Death Investigation. They are on the scene. They pronounce a cause of death. That sets the entire investigation in motion, then they are there with the deaf investigation throughout the process until the very end when they make a trial. You cannot imagine having a Society Without that investigation and its role in the criminal Justice System. It would be anarchy. Any one of those movies where form one single day they decide that all laws you get away with whatever you could get away with. That is essentially what society would be. Wed have murders, getting reprisal killings, and endless cycle, because we have no referees, arbiters or experts to create fairness, consequences and precision in our legal system. This is a very, very familiar aspect of Death Investigation in the United States. The role it serves in the criminal Justice System. I want to call your attention to two other key roles that deaf investigators have played throughout history, apart from the criminal Justice System. These are less appreciated, i think. The first is in Public Health, that investigators are critical components to our Public Health system and throughout our history the corner and the medical examiner had been on the front line in battles with many of our most mortal threats, raising the alarm and uncovering correlations and epidemics no one else is seen. We have to imagine them as i think too often happens, they are in a basement, morbid little place, doing their work, and yet it is washing across their examining tables day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year the rest of this may, in a bad life see data or to. They see hundreds. They are the first to sort of see patterns. Or shifts in how people are going out of the world. They are the ones who sound the alarm. Ill give you a couple of examples and you can multiply them 1000 fold. It is really the corners at the turn of the 20th century who are calling attention to all the industrial accidents that we see as industrialization proceeds in our major city. In pittsburgh, in 1907, its corners who lead the charge against the u. S. Steele who has seen a rash of accidents that they do not want. The corporation itself does not want to advertize it. It is the corners and the emmys office who are seeing these things and leading the charge for improvements and industrial safety. The same thing is true, you guys might be familiar with this 1911 horrific fire at the triangle shirt ways Factory Company where 137 young women died. Some of them of the flames, others perished from leaping out of the eighth story of the building. Nobody tells that story from the perspective of the corners who really led the charge. They saw the damage. They saw this time and time again will be for this one factory fire. They have been dealing with this phenomenon. They were finally fed up. In 1911 they are the ones who lead the charge for more industrial safety around the areas of factory fires. Another example, in 1924, in newark, new jersey, a pathologists performing autopsies discovers that radium, the pain they are using on watch dials, it was a Great Innovation in its day that your watch dial would be painted with this radium paint and glow, but the way the workers worked with their brushes, they would always point the brush so that they could get fine enough lines of paint. They were constantly dipping this brush across their tongue. It had radium on it. They are dying of necrosis of the jean. Anemia and other problems. Its again the coroners who not just see one, my daughter died of systems mysterious circumstances in that one instance. Its the coroner who sees tens and 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 there the first ones for Traffic Safety loss. Everybody there overjoyed. They hit the road. They hit a tree. Shortly after, as soon as you have cars in the 1930s you are starting to have massive accidents. They are not well versed for safety. No traffic lights. No stops lines. So you are seeing more and more traffic fatalities. It is one case here or there for those who have experienced it firsthand, but for the coroner it has happened in mass. So here is a new york medical examiner, 1931, our greatest source of danger todays the operation of the automobile. A wisconsin coroner said in 1930 more lives were lost in milwaukee and then all the acute contagious diseases combined. Like the canary and the coma. They are the ones really see the dangers that are coming at us as they are coming at us. Ill give you a few more examples that were interesting. Corners are the first ones to raise the alarm about needle sharing. This crazy 1933 case of heroin addicts in new york city who are getting malaria. They are the first ones to see the port pattern. Theyre the first ones to see an epidemic of child abuse and spousal abuse among the working class in the industrializing city. They are the first to sound the alarm about sids, sudden infant death syndrome. They see the patterns of more more babies dying for no apparently good reason. They sound the alarm about aids. They get these cases where if its needle sharing, they all seem to be addicts. They have these track marks. I wonder if they have malaria. Would it curious combination. What could be going on here . The same thing with aids. Cocaine related homicides and drug words of the eighties. The corners were saying, wow, this is a raft of violence that i have not seen in my time here before. What exactly is going on . The case we are most familiar with, will smith is in a new movie about concussions and football. That is right based on a real pathologists who worked in a hospital in pittsburgh and started to diagnose brain damage and repeated trauma to the head in american football players. That has become sort of a cause. This is that role, it is not that lured police chalk up line, a sense of how important Death Investigation is to Public Health. Seeing patterns, raising the alarm about how has our society evolved . When you dangers are there that we need to deal with . An inter related area and diagnostics. Because they work with corpse is, the truth is that the investigators have never gotten, i think, the sort of credit they deserve for their role in Public Health with the respect they deserve from their medical peers. The truth is they make their medical peers better. This has been true throughout history. Ill give you one example here. At the turn of the 20th century Massachusetts General Hospital made a major push to have all of its patients autopsied. It was the first time a hospital said everybody who dies in this hospital is going to go down and half an autopsy and we will see if the clinician was right, essentially. The clinician said this person, madam, you have died of a. The corner says no. They uncover just how massively awful their diagnostics were. So what they said was this has to go the other way. Everyone, as part of the medical education has to do autopsies to see these kinds of things firsthand. They paid they played an Important Role in improving medical diagnostics, especially through the rule of the autopsy, which is just the start of the panoply of tools in their tool kit as Forensic Science evolved in the course of the 19th century to produce via the turn of the 20th century, our modernday medical examiner. Im going to walk you through some of these. At a conceptual level, autopsy has been around for ever. First neanderthal, his buddy drops did and he pokes him with a stick wondering when he died of. Dude, i mean that has been around they did an autopsy on cesar. They discovered it at the time he had access to 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 his career. He averaged two a day. Seven days a week for 45 years. That is a ton of autopsies. When he did was perfected as a system. How do we do it the same every time so we do not introduce any errors so we can ensure reproducible results . To be honest, his disease theory was bad. He hated microscopy. He hated to use the microscope. In terms of diagnosing diseases and pathologies that killed people, hes actually not that great. But in terms of systemetized the autopsy, publicizing it, making it an important part, he played a key role. Rudolph virchow, 1821 to 1902 maybe even more important as the father of the modern autopsy. He was a german pathologists, basically the hub of medical knowledge in the 19th century. He moves from vienna to berlin, because hes the one who really seals the deal on the case of cellular pathology being the cause of disease. You remember hype across east, galen all thought that diseases were humorous, out of bounds, so we had these for humors and a circulate throughout our body. Thats why they draw blood. To establish balance. He was like, that is garbage. He warships the microscope. He loved it. In addition to doing micro autopsies he brought the microscope to the center of that investigation. He deserves to be called the father of the modern autopsy. I will just say both of these things come to the United States fairly quickly in the 19th century, the most influential there and not depicted here is william on slur. He studied both of these and came to canada and ultimately to the United States where he becomes the most respected and revered north american physician of his time. He not only performed autopsies speaking of himself he told a friend ive been watching this case, meaning his own medical case, for two months, and im sorry that i shall not see the postmortem. Thats how committed he was to autopsies. That he was not able to do his own. He wouldve loved to do that more than anything else. Anything that was wrong with them, they have to do autopsy. Sure enough autopsy had been around forever. When does it become systematized . Same thing with floating the lungs. It had been around forever. Does anybody know that is . This is going to get more bid. In the case of a baby that is 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 take the lungs of the baby and you would submerge them in water. If the baby had drawn breath their lungs would be narrated. They were flipped. If the baby had not drawn a breath, then the lungs would actually sink. You can do that with drowning victims to see if they drowned because they took so much water in their lungs. Then it would sink as opposed to float. They have been doing that since 16 81 in the case of infanticide. We dont rely on this that much anymore to be honest. Its proven to be an accurate in at least 2 of the cases. This is going to get even more gross. As the body decomposes, gases are released, hence the bloating youve seen civil war corpse. If the corpse is decaying, the lungs will essentially have gases in them and have it float. Not great. 2 is not bad for that era in terms of a degree of error, unless you are one of the women convicted of infanticide and that 2 does not look very good at all. Bloodstain pattern analysis. 8 of our weight as blood. We have five leaders of blood. Anytime you have a trauma, it will release blood. It has all these residues emit. Makes it very difficult to clean. You can imagine that bloodstains have been used for deaf investigations the sky was killed here. He was dragged over here. Hey, that guy had blood on his hands. That is not what we are talking about here. Splatter analysis and blood typing. Blood typing comes of age in 1907. All of that is in 1907. These are for paternity, as you can imagine. Is it my kid. Is it not like it . They also use it in that investigation. Then the bp a, the blood stain pattern analysis. It goes back that far. You have your first scientific papers focused specifically on how blood coagulates, how quickly it dries, whether arterial blood is a little brighter, and the splatter analysis. What kind of motion produces would kind of results in the blood stain on the wall. Fingerprints as well goes way back. Systemetized at the turn of the 20th century. Ancient contracts in babylon you would sink your thumb into the tablets. Even in the 12 hundreds they would do fingerprints. They knew in asia that fingerprints were totally unique. They would use them indepth investigations. But it did not come immediately to the United States until after 19 or two. There is this very famous case called the scheffer case. This guy murders someone in his apartment. He blasts a glass cabinet door open. He leaves a partial print on one of the shards. They can prove because its a partial that it was left after the glass had been broken. It was not there before. He would only put his finger on part of it. It was the first case, 19 or two in france when they convicted somebody on the basis of fingerprint analysis. Trees were slow to accept it, as you can imagine. People had never really thought about fingerprints, but it moves to the United States pretty quickly. In 1906 in new york, basically, they are fingerprinting every criminal that comes through new york city and making cases on the basis of fingerprints. Other examples, the blood alcohol content. That investigators pioneer the test and breathalyzer, which comes way earlier than you would guess. Even today, 30 of traffic fatalities probably have something to do with alcohol. In the 19 fifties and sixties its 15 . Probably higher than that before. So having a blood alcohol test, breathalyzer test was critical. That picture of the breathalyzer tests, nothing more romantic. From 1927 and issue of science and invention, you have all of these guys running to create a great patent for a breathalyzer test. Even forensic dentistry goes way back and then becomes stabilized around 1900. The first case of using forensic dentistry in court is absolutely crazy. There was a guy, breath run George Burroughs used witchcraft. He was biting these people. People were biting themselves but they were accusing him. They admitted this and use it in the court. He was convicted and hung later. He said im sorry to his kids. Its an early form of bite mark analysis and forensic dentistry, but we all know by the 18 seventies, forensic dentistry, dental records are key part of murder investigations. And all of this, comes of age in 19 hundreds. I want you to see the importance of the coroners and the part they play and diagnostics. The forensics science, 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, with all due respect successes, we have a deeply flawed system. Of Death Investigations in the United States. Modernday amazing coroners operate in a very complex environment. Its not always clear if they have Legal Authority to do an autopsy against the interest of the family. Theyve got prosecutors putting their demands. Theyve got organ transplant specialist sitting on their side. They have got tough calls to make. Assisted suicide corners and modeled modernday examiners work in a difficult environment. They also have a rich history of corruption and incompetence. Think about how important that if you investigation is. Think about it whoever controls the, its important how that investigation is. Coroners whoever office controls controls the the Justice System. Corners office, the wheels of justice controls the justice do not turn system. Until the the wheels of coroner make some kind justice dont turn until the court to of pronouncement make some announcement about the cause of about the cause of death death and and sets those wheels in sets those wheels motion so if you in motion. If you do not want dont want those wheels to move those wheels to move, by, via off the off the corner. So corner. Heres a great heres a great case. In the case. In the 19 fifties, 19 fifties a man was a man was phoned found bobbing bobbing in in the space this can be, blindfolded with a knife blindfolded, with a knife in in his back. The him. The coroner coroner ruled it ruled it a suicide. [laughs] as suicide. Right . You can just and you can just imagine the imagine the mob mob bosses who bosses who could could control control a corner. A coroner. The the investigation investigation into this death into this death would would never get started never get started. Even if even if corners didnt stoop coroners did not that low, you can stoop that low, you imagine they reach any got kickbacks can imagine it got routinely for steering bodies to particular undertakers. You can imagine they got undertakers, you can imagine they got money money for for releasing releasing crime scene crime scene photos and photos and other other bits of bits of nastiness nastiness from their own exam tables. For [inaudible] exam tables. And this this is the is the gnarliest gnarliest bit. It was bit, quite frankly. Not until it wasnt until 1968 that we 1968 that we had the had the uniform anatomical uniform gift anatomical gift act, act, which which said that said corners and that him corners could not take ease couldnt take anything out of the anything out of the body body before it before it was put in the was ground put not. Not until 19. Until 1968. 60 so so we are sort of we are sort of all all familiar familiar with with the the ghouls, ghouls, as we call as they were called them. The robbers the grave in the early robbers in the 19th century who would early 19th century steal whole bodies who would steal for uses of the homebodies four uses at the Medical College Medical College, and we know. And we that that practice know that that practice went went out of favor out of favor,. But but the the greek to which degree to which they they used used organs organs from dead bodies from that bodies to do pathology tests. To do pathology tests theres a great deal of that all the way through 1968. There was a massive trade in Human Growth Hormone which you get from the pituitary gland. We would never be able to do this. But if we got dug up tons of tons of bodies from before 1968, i wonder how many would have their pituitary grounds glance, quite frankly, because corners could make all kinds of money selling them on the black market. Just some examples. A dallas emmy in the 19 forties was in the habit of dropping dead babies on their heads to learn about injury patterns. We are doing this in the name of science in this case. But they are doing it without the consent of the parents. To come a washington foreign thick pathologists recently tried to stab courses to develop he was writing a paper knife wounds, essentially. Again, trying to advance science. A milwaukee employee in the 1930s connected the testicles from the dead to test serious about theories of sterility and none of that was illegal, prior to 1960. Eight so the end of the class, right, will be mary roachs book stiff and ill ask you, again, in that class, whether were in a better place now . Whether you would donate your body to science . She writes a lot about cases where if you dont need your body to science, one possibility not inevitable, you couldnt avoid this, but one possibility is that your decapitated head would be used to test lipstick. And that counts as having donated your body to science. So there are some problems with corruption and interests in our gas investigation system, and problems of the incompetence to. That investigation in the United States is one of the least professionalize, least standardized areas of american medicine. This issue actually bubbles to the surface every once in a while, and we just pretended it down and pretend not to notice it. So let me just walking through a few highprofile disasters for Death Investigation in the United States. Starting the, with john kennedy, right . There is probably no autopsy that has been met with Greater Division than kennedys. He was taken, not to anywhere in dallas when he was shot he was taken to but as the naval hospital, 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 . Theyre not really accustomed to dealing with gunshot wounds are any kinds, much less with the president of the United States with a wind of this nature. And then they had secret Service People around, the Kennedy Family is around. They got a lot wrong. They thought they were only two bullets. They couldnt [inaudible] find the wind track. With two Navy Hospital pathologists operating in a confused, intense environment, its a wonder that they are talking reported turned out as good as it was which, which wasnt very good. Which was the official report of the Warren Commission. You guys wouldnt remember this, i remember this when i was alive. Michael Gordon Michael jordan was one of the greatest athletes of time Michael Jordan was better basketball than anyone else was and everything. Comparing apples to oranges, he was fantastic. He was very close to his father. His father was murdered in 1993, and marlborough county, South Carolina. Melbourne county, South Carolina had the corridor the official corner for mueller county, South Carolina was a parttime coroner and a parttime construction worker. Said he didnt have enough room in the fridge for this very unfortunately decomposed body [inaudible] and thrown into a pot swamp where decomposed. So he didnt have anywhere to store it so he just put it in [inaudible] no unfortunately he saved the teeth are not even quite sure why but this became a Major Investigation as you can imagine. 1993, Michael Jordan was a, i dont know, one of the greatest stars on the planet. And the loss of his father was a real black eye for pathology in the United States. The corner in this case i just love this close quote said, i guess ive done for the Corners Association onetimer hearted for figure skating. It was, yes, just a disaster. And ripped from the, headlines right . Is Antonin Scalia who quite frankly shouldnt have had an autopsy, given how highprofile his cases. The guy had all kinds of health, problems. He was old he was way overweight he was he had all kind of risks im sure a heart attack is probably what claimed his life. But like with kennedy, the conspiracy theories that follow in the wake of feeling to do any kind of analysis is a problem. So you guys know the story, right . This is very recent. He was hunting in a Little Mexican border town on a remote ranch, he was found dead by the ranch owner, who said, we discovered the judge in bed, a pillow over his head. And then what happens is remote texas, right . And again, its takes. So they dont actually we dont fly him, over they dont take him to [inaudible] he was pronounced dead with a cause of death by fall. Because thats the way our system works. It has all kinds of holes in it. And then once trump heres 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 find a pillow and im michael savage, the conservative radio host this is going to be bigger and bigger and bigger. We need [inaudible] the likes of the Warren Commission commission, the essential notice the notion that the Supreme Court justice has been snuffed out with a pillow of escape. None of that would have happened if we had a standardized system of debt investigation. These are just the high profile disasters. Quite frankly, we dont have a system. Thats part of the problem. As late as 2009, in his report, strengthening friends six signs of the United States [inaudible] the National Academy of science lamented, Death Investigation in the United States is fragmented, deficient, hodgepodge, and [inaudible]. And as i said, we dont have a system. What we essentially have is the medical examiner whose goals should be, arent always, justice and science, overload on top of much, much, all their system. The system of the corner. And if the system of the coroner they want that i want to talk about for the rest of our electric today. Now i dont want to turn corners into the villains of the story. Thats not my point. Many of the advancements that i made at the beginning, with [inaudible] factory and all that, those four corners. They were discovered they, were on the front lines of our Public Health and discovered these real [inaudible] and came forward. So i dont at all want to flight them. And you want to say im a historian. So i want to 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 there would be. Its always been interested in something else, something approximating that, but not exactly the same. So does anybody know where that word corner comes from . Corona. This lap before crown. So in hamlet, they call a corner a crown or. Essentially, hes a representative of thinking. Okay, so what you can do is think back, way back into medieval england. And youve got the sheriff, right, of nottingham, whos squeezing all the president taking all of that money. And none of that money is going up to the king. So the king invents coroner. The king essentially needs someone who can go around the sheriff and make sure that revenue is running where it hot, which is to the kings coffers. So think of the coroner as essentially the kings vulture. He is essentially flying around, and whenever there is a dispute or a problem, the vulture descends to see if wait, wait, wait, somebody must represent lookings interest here. And make sure he gets his and. Well what would that have to do with deaths . Wherever you have a death, right . Property is bluest from its legal more. This is a tax fire. He does your money . Who doesnt your money too . Did he commit suicide . If he committed suicide, thats a dry and crime against religion, the king seizes the estate. Here is the greatest. One if they found a dead norman on the village commons, they assessed a tax on the whole village call the murdrum, which is where we get the weight murder coast from the very ancient system of the corner. Wherever you see the coroner, you see the english input. Things didnt go this way in france and germany and other places they developed a medical Examiner System much earlier. Only in places that had the british imprint, british colonies or britain itself, do you have the office of the coroner. Okay. So one of the things id like to suggest is that the coroner s really a creature of the state, instead of thinking of the corner as on the side of justice or on the side of science, and thats whats evolving in this period. Really just a creature of the state. If the state is on the side of justice, if the state is on the side of science, well then the coroner might be there to. If 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. Our and here we arrive at our assignment for the coming weeks. To illustrate the point that ive just made, that the coroner is not in his or her dna necessarily the origins of the office, is not necessarily science and justice, but in representing the interests of the state, we are going to do a little object lesson by doing a deep dive into the corners reports from the 19th century south, using sea as i dixie, which you can find out cbs i did see. Org. But the site does its South Carolina between 1800 and 1900. It digitized the same, which is you can read you can read the original record, but it also datafies them once this is a homicide, was this the suicide, was just an accidental death . All of that. Just [inaudible] as you what you will see as we get into this assignment. These are the corners reports as i first came across them. You guys [inaudible] you guys know im one morbid dude, right . I have been fixated on death since i was a little kid, and i think i was always destined to open this box of corners reports in South Carolina. The minute i opened it, i was just how many are in here . Its all index, right . All [inaudible] nothing of the new of all these lawyers. The happy moments in all of these lives are perfectly lost. We already know the end. And if we can pick it up, it doesnt end well right, they all indifferent they do. They all in the same. And for this weird moment, right, i figured, thats two of all of us. Well all in different. We all in the same. Nobodys ever escaped mortality. And so that moment in that meeting room insult Carolina Department of history, it was like [inaudible] as the pope would have, and death was looking gigantically down. And i could feel i was going on everyone on the reading for, we were all making our varied ways to the grave, just like everyone else in this box. And i became fixated, buy them and thats part of why i put this project together and why im inflicting it upon you. So that you can become fixated on it. To hear you see the business with the state, right . So this is the state versus the dead body of [inaudible] property of [inaudible] english. Its just a way rude way of writing it. And even in legal terms, right . When he commit murder, you dont commit murder against a person, you can commit the murder against the peace and dignity of the. State. The state has an interest in which its protecting to some degree. To some degree the rule of law. This is how i found them and they were just sort of a dump jumble little mass, a bunch of endings. Now weve got 1582 these guys jumping into let me just show you how they were. So that you wont get confused when youre actually working on the assignment. Every one of them house when i call cover sheets, kind of. Its not like it doesnt look like a form, but its pretty well standardized and standardized by law. In this case its the state of South Carolina with districts, and then it became an inquisition and then it was taken in the woods near it always starts with that. An inquest has to take place where the body lies. Youre supposed to leave it there. In this case this inquest is taking place in the woods near william gardeners. You always get a date. The fourth day of january in the year of our lord 1817. Youve got a corner, in this case hes the justice of the quorum. I will not even get into with that is. You get a dead guy. Its the body of alexander mickey. Youve got the jurors, in this case, white men. 12 white men. Then you get this phrase, which i became addicted to finding. Do say upon their owes, a rhapsody of infamy. That was always my cue. If somebody is walking out in this case the key became you were deranged or insane. He escaped from his family. He died from exposure. An era in which they dont they would routinely treat people with problems at home. They would essentially lock their loved ones up and he would escape. In this case it was like a mental right. Right. So not any teen 17. You will start to see it in South Carolina and in other places for penitentiary facilities for the death, dumb, blind and insane. Other kinds of improvements, but not in 1817. He had to take care of it at home. In this case as i said, he escaped and died of exposure. That is just a cover sheet. Its mostly boiler plate. And gives you data. When i am saying its just one of the pages in a typical coroners report. In this case what you have is a dissenting of a minority report. In this case, a guy named geno, this is in South Carolina. He had been charged to the slave jail, essentially, and the slave was injured. He cannot walk fast enough so gino put a chain around his neck and dragged him until he was deaf dead. 11 jurors said i dont know. This guy was like, are you kidding . Undoubtedly in support of slavery. But he thought they were some boundaries. And so he writes this minority report. And you get the testimony of women and slaves. They cannot testify a trial, but they cant testify here before a corners inquest. It is written out by the coroner himself or another white man, so it is testimony that moves through white patriarchy to be documented, but its at least their version of what happens, so we get cases of an inquest jury finding that a slave woman had died of apoplexy, but her daughter says her mom was hit with a shovel. We get traces of which really happened in these inquest files. And you get some hint of the poor wives of the antebellum south. Every one of these people are making their mark. I want you to be familiar with that. This says william hall. He cannot actually write his name. The corner has written his name for him. He just put an x right there, and all of these, they are all white men. So you get much more evidence than just a cover sheet 20 of these inquests. We do not know wooden inquest look like. There are many people that left descriptions of what it looked like to have an inquest. This is nothing that we do know. Somebody dies, you leave the body there for a long time and you get 12 people to stand over it and call in other people to sort of say, yes, i saw that guy papa walk past me. We just dont do it that way. They had did it that way. Actually, this is a cartoon from 1826. I actually think its pretty good. By getting at whats when an inquest was. Like you wont be able to read this, but one of the jurors says the man is alive, sir, for he has opened one i. The coroner, sir, the doctor declared him dead so he must remain dead, sir. So i shall proceed. What is going on here . What do you notice . Who is this guy, probably . This guy probably owns the house. You have to be able to decode the way they would draw things in the 19th century. Well worn, clearly high class. Given the league and whatnot. This guy is the home owner and this guys code for lower we class. They were repulsive in their faces. They were unkempt in terms of their hair. These guys are poorer. What you see here is an overlapping of layers of authority in this one really cramped space. There is the authority of the state who has sort of brought them all here to discover someone has murdered a piece of dignity of the state. You get medical authority and the form of the doctor who has already made his pronouncement. This is actually a religious figure. I dont know if you can see. He has a collar. Religions legitimacy gives meeting to the mortality and explained to us what we should do with our feelings when bad things happen. Why does god allow these things to happen. There is the authority of religion. There is an authority to local knowledge to. This guy is not well fed. They dont have the nicer house. They have an Authority Based on local circumstances. Then there is sort of this authority they are all crammed in this one space. They are all facing death together in the same intimate place. I want you to remember that when you are working on your assignment. That inquest was the product of this cultural process, grappling with death and coming to some kind of conclusion. These guys are probably not interested exactly in science or in justice, per se. They have a more subtle sense of things. This is a book by one of my friends, laura edwards. The people and their piece, transformation in the post revolutionary south. It makes you think about this book as you are working on your inquests. Her argument is essentially that what was most important in this period was the piece, not just us. What was the piece . Whatever was true yesterday should be true tomorrow, so you have a death, a rift in the peace and those 13 men. They are essentially trying to come to some sort of satisfactory conclusion and return us to the peace. State level law gets made, but you have the coroners inquest. And that is why women and slaves cannot testify. It is not exactly the legal proceeding or judicial proceeding it is a proceeding of the community to restore order to the community. Women and slaves testify because they know it was true yesterday, and it should be true tomorrow. Its very different than our sense of the fbi or the Sheriffs Office or all of these people whose whole function is to compel us to obey the law. This is a different sort of endeavor altogether. Okay. I want to sort of aggregate those 1582 cases for us, to just give you a sense of what i learned from seeing this. What came out of that massive box. To tell you the truth, what came out as when i should have known before i started, whatever social gear would have told me. I did all of this i digitized 1582 cases to discover okay, a social worker would have come to me and said tell me about this place. I would say well, it is a land of massive poverty. It is a land where most whites are radically underemployed. It is a land of rampant alcoholism. It is a land where they teach nobody to swim, where there are no social services. Where there are no treatments for addiction. There is no access to Birth Control. She or he would have told me okay, i will tell you exactly with this will look like from the morgue. They do not teach their kids to swim so they will drown. They have no access to Birth Control so you will have massive numbers of unwanted pregnancies. You will have a massive number of dead babies. You will have massively angry underemployed, alcoholic fathers who will have a decimating amount of spousal abuse and child abuse. You are going to have souls so desperate that they will hang themselves before they will live in that world. Would i now know, if you were a white male, South Carolina, between 1840 and 1880, you would have a coroner standing over your body, how did you die . A combination of alcohol and stupidity. So we have this idea of the old south, particularly as this place of knife fights, i gouging, dueling. It is so much faster than that. If you were a white female and South Carolina in that same period with the coroner standing over your body, how did you die . You hung yourself. If you are an African American male you hung yourself. It is a land of no social services. White men are drinking themselves to death. A land of massive rural poverty. That is the way people went out of the world in such a place. Okay, you are assignment is going to be to right up when inquest as a narrative story. Take it as a starting point and use it to tell me something about life and death in the 19th century south. You just take one case and you try to peel it like an onion. Tell its story, but also try to branch out. To give you an example, im going to end with one story told from csa dixie and an inquest there. It is the story of the death of james moses stevenson, albert manured in hamburg, South Carolina. In 1876. This is where we will end, with this one story from a set of inquests insidious i. D. This map i know its probably hard for you all to see. Hamburg is right here. It is directly across this river. You can orient yourself to hamburgers directly across the way. Here is the Savannah River, flowing down to the sea here and this is the port at charleston, one of the most important cities in the antebellum south. So hamburg had been settled in 1820 by Henry Schultz in his native germany. It quickly became a hub of wagon traffic. It would come here pulling cotton from the interior of the south. At first in 1820, we dont have railroads yet. Most of that cotton is going by the river, by the Savannah River to ports here. And here to charleston by a vote. So that is 1820 and by 1825 a build this hamburg to charleston the real road. The famous, famous baltimore ohio railroad. If you look on wikipedia right now, it will say, and it was the longest carrier in the United States. No. Because everybody forgets about the hamburg to charleston line. Chartered in 1827. That was the Worlds Largest railroad and its completion and its heyday, 16,000 bails of cotton. Csiok im guessing this era [inaudible] had a lot of wagon traffic it was economically depressed. Thats what well see especially afterward. What happens to hamburg is that it becomes a spur town. Right, youre familiar with these . Where the rain we essentially goes around it or find another route. And so by 1876, hamburg is a ghost town. Essentially. Jared and what you have after the civil war is African Americans specialized in these places. The problem, if youre African American, tom after the civil war, part of that is real estate. What real estate do you actually own . None. 40 acres out of youll forget about it you dont own anything. So we are all familiar with the degree to which the African American Church Becomes the center of its not just religious life but political life and specific life. [inaudible] its a real estate problem. Thats one building they had, thats one building the out. And so it becomes a school house and a wreck center and the political incubator and a place where people gather. It is everything to them so when the air fire bombing churches, theyre doing far more than [inaudible] just the spirit of the African American community. Its a real estate problem. So anyway, African Americans specialized in these depressed little towns because theyve been great once, right . But now they are totally left behind, there are ghost town, you couldnt buy this real estate from relatively cheap. And you can direct an African American town where you can safeguard yourself, your kids and your community so thats what 1876. It essentially has 600 residents, a fifth of them are white. A fifth of them are fine, living in a majority African American community [inaudible] this is great. I like hamburg. So heres the story that i would tell about hamburg in 1876. So july four, 1876, right . Its the hundredyear birthday of the United States. And the president of the United States, ulysses s grant, tells says, what should we do to celebrate . Well, every town should have a parade with [inaudible] sort tom of like militia [inaudible] march. And they should write the tones history, and they should read the declaration of independence. And well sort of collect all those down histories and itll be a biography of america. And this is going to be great. So. Thats the todd idea july four, 1876. Remember, majority africanamerican done. They have an african militia. Their guns are terrible, they have noble, that doesnt matter. Theyre marching, theyre having a good time. Its a read that declaration of independence and theyre watching here at the Center Square of the African American town of hamburg, which they have bought with their own money. And right here is a wagon, two boys in it, a guy named tommy butler and henry getson. And theyre walking. This got march after their militia captain, a guy named john adams. This was one witness who remembered their marching there were most people in any Company Water colored, no matter where they came from,. Adams, the militia captain at the melville. So harry gets in and tell butler actually belonged to the butler plantation. To get their they had to come across the river from augusta where they were down the river trading, by wagon, and then move around to their fathers plantation thats over here so theyre constantly having to come through hamburg on their way to augusta and from their plantation. And its driving them crazy that this is such a successful African American town. Its driving them crazy, probably, that these are black men with guns, yet they are so well ordered and so drilled, that they are so happy. On july four, 1876. This represents everything that they dont want to see in the history of the United States. So they drive their wagon directly into the parade. They could easily have gone around. This is actually a lot of very large field. They could have gone around this easily. They dont, they derive directly up to the parade land 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 wanted all of his talents to do. Get in getson says, doesnt matter this is the route i always travel. [inaudible] this is the route i travel. I cannot be in a new place in a new space, figured you thought. This is the route i always travel. So doc adams freelance and he says, open order, and essentially, make a whole. 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 sheriffss office attempt to swear out a warrant on doc adams, his militia, for obstructing a public road. The the meet Prince Rivers. I want to tell you the story Prince Rivers is one of the more remarkable stories of from reconstruction. Hes the town just essentially the trial justice in the town. Hes also the mayor of hamburg. He is also the general of the militia. So he wears he wears a lot of hats. So they come to his office to swear out this complaint. I want to just give you a little bit of a back story. This is the best picture we have prince rivets. He had been born in slavery. He taught himself to read and write. He was a carriage driver in bluford, South Carolina. As soon as the civil war starts, he drops on his carriage horse and drugs into freedom. He joins two [inaudible] is attacked in new york because he has chevron zone, and even whites there dont want to see a black officer anymore than holds and here more than holds his own. This man was one to have henry. His commander, [inaudible] thomas [inaudible] higgins says that he had no way of equal. [inaudible] no anti slavery novel has described a man in such marketability of his education have reached a higher point. I see no reason why you should not commands the army of the potomac. And if there should ever be a black monarchy in South Carolina, he will be its king. He didnt become king of South Carolina, as we know. But he was known as the black prince. He was the power of [inaudible] county. So edfield county the, most an reconstructed county in South Carolina, has a county carved out of it. And he was trying to make a go of interracial democracy in [inaudible] at the height of reconstruction. So hes got these angry roy men who have this ridiculous notion that they are going to drag his foolish captain out to some legal pushes and be demented rat. He says maybe this man is drug was the hard heads. Cooler heads will prevail. He says, come on back in a few days. All have dark items here and well have some of the militia people here. Well see if we cant settle this. Couple of days later, matthew calibrate butler, no relation probably no relation but you know how the south is to the butler boys shows up at print rivers office. This guy is totally on reconstructed. In his first run at congress, he lost to a black man. He tried to take it out on local blacks. They burned down his house. But early and reconstructed as i say, this is a quote from one of his friends worth all of his beautiful manners, when he wanted to, he could be the most cold blooded in solid human being that mortal ice every beheld. So he said he was there as general butler. I dont know if he thinks his Confederate Service isnt overnight. Dont know whats going on. He says hes there as the butlers lawyer but theyre as general butler he demands that the militia come to him. They stack their arms and surrender those and that doc adams formerly apologize to the butler boys for how they treated them on the 4th of july. Prince rivers asked if they did all that, would but do about for their safety . Butler says, it is owing how they apologized to mr. Butler for the how they treated his sons on the fourth. So heres our situation. Most of the militia is holding up. This is where the parade had been days before. Most of the militia is holed up here at the armory. They had 120 rounds of family. The grounds are really quite be. So they are gunmen for the civil war, we think its such a breakthrough this, you know, rightful musket on the shoulder of every man in the army. But its the winter. That Technology Comes in right after the civil war. We think of it as the gun that won the west. Is the consequence. Off the African Americans in their armory, and 120 are rounds of mri really cramming guns were by comparison with the people who start flooding into hamburg, coming across the bridge from augusta, many of them are carrying with justice. And there we have strong accounts that they brought the local grocer out of alcohol. So by 6 pm, they are well drunk. And the folks in the army armory are starting to worry about whats going to happen. About 6 00, they opened fire on the armory. The arbery returned fire. Maybe did or maybe didnt kill one guy [inaudible] mary whether. He might have been killed by his own dudes. We dont know that. He promised earlier in the day that he was going to kill everybody in the army and go to have until jesus christ himself. Anyway, mckee marie where the falls here. The guys are off. They take it, they drank a cannon across the bridge from augusta. They blow a hole in the armory. African american militia men and otherwise escape at the back of the armory, many of them are captured and theyre carried to the dead ring, which is right there. And 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 is in the ring he asked me is what you think of this. Attaway we turn [inaudible] now by all accounts he running gambling operation in hamburg. I dont know, attaway one, to think of it he responded. Do you think theyll kilowatt . Yes, i think so, just. So said me. Do you think they will call be attaway asked [inaudible]. I do, segment. All youve got to do now is free to go to save us all. Just give up your wife and children and everything else, for they are going to kill you. With that attaway hung his head and commenced crying. There was actually terrific disagreement among the whites but just want to do. Some of them just wanted there in a ring, right, around the African American prisoners. They just want over the ring up and turn it into a firing line and be done with. It one white named bill robertson, who had been the son of a judge, says, no no, no gentlemen, not the way to do it. Its going to pull a court were shot and what the courtmartial [inaudible] you could do it. Without a small detachment moved away from the ring. It probably consulted with general but low, certainly they drew up a list. Attaway, as getson remember henry getson one of the boys in the wagon. As getson antonio leaving to drop the realest. Attaway says do much account for me attaway because getson. [inaudible]. I will fix you now in a short while. Getson and tony. Comeback attaway says the first time they call, they carry him down to a local field, right there, where they shoot him in the head. They come back to the ring and then they do that for more times. The last time they call her name, [inaudible] , at the sound of his name, hes up and running. Runs as fast as he can. Hes gunned down. And presumed dead. And one of the gunman said, 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 gate ring. So what do you do the next day . You convene a coroners into inquest. Remember how we started the whole conversation . The wheels of justice junior concern until the corner make so pronouncement. This is the place where African Americans actually control the Corners Office in civil society. And we write so many books about massacres and about lynchings i, wish we wrote more books about what you do the next day to pick up the pieces. And in this case, Prince Rivers stood over the dead bodies of those six man and convened a corners request, because thats what you do. And he gathers together the pages of the testimony and issues arrest warrants for 87 white men including matthew butler, future South Carolina senator and coleman feet, future and benton South Carolina. That of course it makes it here to the new york times. Unfortunately, it doesnt make it any farther, the wheels of justice eternal more, the straight outs as they were called wariness descendants and reconstruction with rolling back to reverse this may, there were no more links in the chain. He tells his son joshua, who is then interviewed by the wpa in 1930s, he says now it will be 100 years. So he knows exactly what they lost that hamburg. It wasnt that it happened, it was that the government wasnt going to do anything about it. Okay, what happens the rivers . He returns to driving a carriage and to me, this is the arc it isnt just the people who were brutalized or killed during the reconstruction it is to take a person like rivers who couldve been in charge of the army. Weve been the mayor of a town in a state legislature and all those things but he argues from a carriage driver to a state legislature, to a mayor and to a carriage driver again. Driving white people around. Tired in his delivery suit untold beaver had, he looked like a piece of a statuary. So erect inform whats he. Some oh, whet markers or memorials on the ground, how should we remember what happened at hamburg . In 1916 they erected a monument to the massacre, to the right as it was described then. To marry whether, the lone wife who had been killed and promised to kill jesus christ themself probably caught in that cross fire. And inscribed on that monument is in life he exemplified the highest idea of anguish action civilization by, his that, he assured towards children of his Promised Land to the supremacy of that ideal. After which, they watched birth of a nation. And wet monument remains . The Prince Rivers and all of the men of hamburg, where is hamburg now . This is what happens to hamburg. In 1911, the river floods and basically augusta has the money and the federal poll to get the army of core engineers out, to shore up the levees, hamburg does not. In 1929, the next flood comes through and hamburg washes away. All that they owned, all that they bought, none of it protected. All of it returned and now, known as north augusta. And here we are around the site at the hamburg massacre. This is a golf resort thats widely really well appointed streets, houses, right on the river in prime real estate, what it would have meant to the African American community to own this today. How many millions of dollars might that be . I dont have anything against golf, maybe gentrification would have happened anyway. My question is, how do we remember whats markers remain on the land for us to remember . Heres the execution site. Remember that low field where they shot down charles at away attaway and three others. And what is running over that . That is the Jefferson Davis memorial highway. So that is just an example of a kind of story that you can write from these inquests and that i hope you will write in the weeks ahead. Does anybody have any questions about the investigation in the United States . The Coroners Office in the 19th century or anything else . I know it has been another gillam day and the history of death and dying in United States, ill see you all on tuesday, thank you very much. American history tv on cspan 3. Every weekend documenting americas story. Funding for American History tv comes from these companies who support cspan 3 as a public service. It it