William Cunningham, the Ghoul of Cincinnati

Resurrectionist William Cunningham was actively stealing bodies from grave sites around Cincinnati from 1855 to 1871. He was well known, and he was something of a legend. He once returned to the same gravesite at which he had earlier been caught digging – after he’d bought those who had detained him a drink. He dressed the bodies he stole. And, he had a “villainous bald head.”

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. It said that this body
snatcher once returned to the same grave side at which
he had earlier been caught digging, after he'd bought those

(00:22):
who had had detained him a dream. It's also said
he dressed the bodies he stole, and that he had
a quote villainous bald head. Welcome to Criminalia. I'm Maria Tremarque,
and I'm Holly Fry. Ohio was a hotbed of grave
robbing activity in the United States in the nineteenth century.

(00:42):
The first recorded account of a body snatched from its
grave in the state was at Zanesville in the early
nineteenth century. There are numerous stories about body snatching activities
in Columbus, about fifty miles away, too, and nearly all
were related to the supply and demand for cadavers at
medical schools. One stands out for us among many snatchers

(01:06):
from that town and state, who was a man named
Charles Morton. Charles was a University of Michigan medical school
dropout who went on to become well known in the
body snatching business. He transported corpses in large vats that
he had labeled pickles. But colorful though he is, Charles

(01:27):
is not actually the only standout. This episode of Criminalia
doesn't take place in Columbus, Ohio. It takes place in
Cincinnati during the mid eighteen hundreds, during the time of
the American Civil War. Cincinnati was a rapidly growing city
during the nineteenth century. The Ohio River provided numerous business opportunities,
and hotels, restaurants, and taverns quickly opened to meet the

(01:49):
developing needs of those traveling along the river. The city
was also becoming a significant meat packing center and was
nicknamed the Porkopolis of the United States. We're interested in
one of its notorious residents, the resurrection man William Cunningham.
Thirty six years before William hit the Cincinnati body snatching scene,

(02:11):
Daniel Drake established the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati,
which welcomed its first class in eighteen nineteen. The city
became a center for medicine. Thirteen medical schools were operating
there between eighteen twenty and eighteen eighty. William was born
in Ireland. His age is disputed, but many historians estimate

(02:32):
he was probably born around eighteen oh seven, when he
died in eighteen seventy one. The corner estimated his age
to be sixty five, which you know that matches up,
But according to the US Census, William's self reported age
in eighteen seventy was fifty. He may or may not
have passed through Virginia before settling in Cincinnati, but we

(02:54):
do know that William was actively stealing bodies from grave
sites around since in Addie from eighteen fifty five to
seventy one. William's wife, Mary Cunningham, was frequently described as
a quote fun loving woman that liked her whiskey and
was rough around the edges. She sounds great. She was

(03:15):
also described as quote a bony, brawny john Irish woman
with a mouth like an alligator. She still sounds great.
Good to say that still great. She may or may
not have assisted her husband during his nighttime trips to
the graveyard, at least in some capacity during his sixteen
years in the business. We'll talk more about her later.

(03:39):
No one seems to have called William by his given name.
Those who didn't call him Old Man Dead called him
Old Cunney. He was known to be the local boogeyman
known as the ghoul of Cincinnati, and tales of him
coming to snatch you were used to frighten badly behaving
children into shaping up. He appeared in fulk Kills around

(03:59):
Since and Eddie, including stories of his body snatching adventures
as well as his luck eluding the law. The Cincinnati
Inquirer on January nine, eighteen seventy described William in this
charming way quote to have seen Cunningham is to retain
him in your memory for a lifetime. For that ponderous

(04:20):
yet gaunt frame, that strong marked face corrugated with age
and crime, a canine mouth from the corners of which
slowly trickles the generous saliva impregnated with the juices of nicotine.
And that shuffling gait caused by a broken leg received
from a charge of buckshot constitutes a tout ensemble, sufficiently

(04:43):
striking to make a very vivid impression. I love that
entire description. May I be described in such colorful ways.
I will take care of business for you. He is
also described as having been quote a big, raw boned am,
was a protruding lower jaw, and an insatiable thirst for

(05:04):
hard liquor. According to the William drove an Express wagon
at least for his day job. That's how he's listed
in the city directory at the time, and local papers
note that as his occupation as well. Some records suggest
he was a Draymond driver, which is a person who
delivers beer at night. Though he snatched and sold fresh

(05:24):
corpses and undercover job that was definitely not listed in
the city directory. It's estimated that Williams snatched at least
a hundred bodies during his career and sold each four
between twenty and thirty dollars to medical schools without a
legal way for people to donate their body for dissection.
This is a problem we've talked at length about this season.

(05:46):
The schools were eager to buy them, even if they
were procured illegally. We're going to take a break here
for a word from our sponsor, and when we're back,
we're going to describe exactly how old Man Dead transported
the bodies he stole. Welcome back to Criminalia. Go ahead

(06:16):
and guess what was in the box william deposited at
the US Express Office sent c O. D. Let's see
if you're right. Being a body snatcher was hard work.
It was physically demanding work. According to the Cincinnati Enquirer,
the body snatching process was kind of like this quote.
They don't really open the grave. They simply dig a

(06:37):
hole about two ft square over the head of the coffin.
When they get to that, they break out the coffin
head and fastened big hooks to which strong ropes are
attached under the arms of the corpse and haulowed out
by main force. William, it said, it was fearless when
it came to both digging up and transporting bodies greg

(06:58):
hand Locals. Sinati historian describes William's transportation set up and
we quote he would disguise the corpses that he had
just pulled from the grave by having them sit next
to him on his wagon as he drove through town,
passing the police. After his death, a story about William
told by a quote very knowing acquaintance appeared in a

(07:20):
local newspaper on March first before It was very likely
a physician who did business with him, and it goes
like this. One night, I remember I met Connie driving
into the city with a stiff and horrible as the
site was, there was something grotesquely ludicrous about it. He
had placed the corpse in a sitting position on the
seat beside him, and had dressed it in an old

(07:42):
coat and a vest and a plate out hat. He
kept his arm round the waist of the corpse to
steady it from the jolting of the vehicle. But every
now and then the horrid thing would double up on
the seat, and its head kept bobbing up and down
in the ghastliest way you ever saw. Then Old Coney
would give the stiff a slap in the face and
sit up. This is the last time, by God, I'll

(08:03):
ever take you home. When you get drunk. You ought
to be ashamed of yourself, drunk as a boiled owl
with a wife and children to support. Can you even
imagine this scene? Can you? My? I have many times
in my imagination. It's weekend at Bernie's. We've seen it,
We've seen it all. As we talked about earlier, a

(08:24):
growing number of medical schools opened and flourished in Ohio
during the mid nineteenth century. During the years that William
was active at his night job, there were at least
five established schools operating throughout Cincinnati, including the Medical College
of Ohio on Sixth Street, The Cincinnati College of Medicine
and Surgery at Central in Longworth, the Eclectic Medical Institute

(08:47):
at Court and Plum Streets, Miami Medical College on Twelfth Street,
and the Physio Medical College on the corner of Seventh
and Cutter Streets. Each of those schools had anywhere from
a few dozen into a few hundred students, all of
whom needed cadavers to study human anatomy. Medical schools needed
a certain number of bodies not for season classrooms, but

(09:10):
for anatomy training. Because they weren't able to secure them
through legal means. Most worked with body snatchers, and some
were pretty creative in their relationships with the local resurrection
ment if you were delivering to Sixth Street. For instance,
the Medical College of Ohio had a pretty convenient feature.
The school, and we quote historian Greg hand on this again,

(09:32):
had a drop off shoot for bodies, so that a
wagon could drive down the alley out back of the school,
unloaded body into the shoot, and it was picked up
there by the anatomical professor the next day. Deliveries took
place at night, and so did dissection demonstrations, which have
been described as taking place in quote, poorly lit laboratories

(09:52):
in the midst of a rowdy crowd of tobacco smoking
and chewing students. William didn't let something like location hold
him back from making money in his business, and unlike
most body snatchers, his reach went beyond Cincinnati. He would
ship bodies to out of town and out of state physicians,
including as far away as Kansas, at least that's the

(10:14):
farthest we know of. As reported in the Cincinnati Daily
Gazette on January and note that there's some outdated language
in this quote, Cunningham, the resurrectionist, deposited a box at
the US Express office marked glass with care c O
d Dr M. P. Hayden, Leavenworth, Kansas. Suspicions of the

(10:37):
company's agents were excited, and when they opened the box,
it contained the body of a Negro woman, prepared for
the dissecting knife and served up in a sack. The
freight was returned to Mr Cunningham. That's just crazy, they
just sent it. So we're now going to take a

(10:59):
break for from our sponsor. When we return, we'll talk
about the end of William's career as a resurrection man
and how he's at least partly to blame for the
invention of something called the coffin torpedo. Welcome back to criminalia.

(11:26):
For more than a decade, William evaded arrest and punishment
for his involvement in the illegal body trade, but nothing
less forever. William is described as having been vindictive, and
this came through in his work, at least in his
graveyard work. In an act of revenge, William once sold

(11:48):
and delivered a body infected with smallpox to naive medical
students who had once played a joke on him, and
several reports suggest that this was the beginning of the
end for his career. That's a fast way to lose
your goodwill with the medical community that's been covering up
your stuff for a while, and new kidding, Just give
a bunch of them smallpox. He had evaded arrest for

(12:10):
roughly fifteen years when his good luck changed for the worse.
On August thirty one, eighteen seventy one, the Cincinnati Enquirer
ran a feature on William when he was finally arrested.
They wrote, quote, everybody knows Old Cunney, the resurrectionist whose
occupation for many years past has been to supply the
various medical colleges of the city with subjects for dissection,

(12:33):
and who, it is understood, has amassed quite a handsome competency.
At his contraband employment. Twelve or fifteen years ago, when
he was in the prime of manhood, Coney was so
adroit and careful, though daring withal, that he carried on
the business almost without molestation. But of late years, his

(12:53):
increasing age and infirmity have several times thrown him into
the hands of the officers, though by sing uller good fortune,
he has hitherto escaped punishment. Their feature continued as so
yesterday morning. About one o'clock, the attention of two police
officers was attracted by the figure of an old man
driving at a rapid rate down to Cincinnati Street, followed

(13:16):
by a crowd of men and boys running after him,
hooting and hollering stop him, shoot him, and the like.
The officers called him to stop, but he only laid
whip to his horse and drove past them. The horse, however,
was lame, and the load in the wagon seemingly heavy,
and after a short race, one of the officers grasped
the bridle while the other took charge of the driver.

(13:36):
The driver was old Cunney, who, returning after a night's
work at his ghoulish employment, had been delayed on his
road home by an accident to his vehicle. In the
wagon was found a sack containing the dead body of
a man, while a similar package on the seat beside
him contained the remains of a child, a boy ten
or twelve years old. The Cincinnati Daily Gazette reported on

(13:58):
his arrest as well, but their take was a little different,
though they wrote, quote, William Cunningham first fired his brain
with whiskey, then fired off an enormous revolver on Central Avenue.
On September twelfth, eighteen seventy one, local papers reported William
had been indicted on five counts. We've actually seen that

(14:18):
number also reported as low as two. He entered a
plea of not guilty, paid three hundred dollars bail, and
was released. He was to answer to the charge of
a legal possession of dead human bodies at the next
session of the Common Pleas Court on January thirty one, two,
but he didn't make it. On October seventy one, local

(14:38):
papers reported that William was a patient in the Cincinnati
hospital and that he, as quoted from The Inquirer, regarded
the announcement of his demise yesterday morning as an error.
The article described William as suffering from a quote temporary
derangement of his system from heavy alcohol consumption. He promised
the press he'd be out in a few days and

(14:59):
he'd be back to business, but William died on November two.
After his death, William was on the other side of
the dissection door. He sold his body to the Medical
College of Ohio for fifty dollars, and after their students
were done practicing on it, the faculty had the skeleton
put on display, wrote the Cincinnati Enquirer on September two.

(15:25):
His ghastly skeleton, neatly articulated and wired, sits on a
tombstone in the cabinet of that institution. Well. In his hand,
he grasps a spade, the emblem of his calling in life.
Between his teeth, he holds a short pipe, as he
was wont to in the days of flesh. The reporter
noted that the only things missing from the exhibit were

(15:47):
his gray horse and his wagon. And then there's Mary.
It's possible that it was William's wife who sold his
corpse for fifty dollars, but it's not the story most
often pulled of his death. We do know she picked
up or perhaps continued body snatching work after he died.
As reported in the Ohio State Journal in December eight

(16:10):
she was arrested along with four others for snatching the
body of a child and selling it to Miami Medical
College in Cincinnati. The article noted her as quote the
widow of Cunningham, a former notoriety in this business. Historians
estimate that as many as five thousand bodies were exhumed
for dissection in Ohio in the nineteenth century, although these

(16:33):
kinds of methods weren't in place yet when William was
actively snatching bodies Ohioans. This was not limited to Ohio,
we should be clear, developed a few inventive ways to
prevent bodies from being stolen from the grave. A lot
of it had to do with old man Dead in
his work, though. Six years after William died, Philip K.

(16:54):
Clover of Columbus, Ohio, for instance, invented and patented a
device that was to quote prevent the unauthorized resurrection of
dead bodies. Clover called his device a coffin torpedo, and
here is how it worked. Buried underground the torpedo would
fire several lead balls into anyone who disturbed the grave.

(17:16):
A few years later, in former probate Judge Thomas and
Howell of Circleville, Ohio, received a patent for an exploding
shell that would sit above a coffin and go off
if the grave was disturbed. Over time, the development of
and and the improvement of embalming methods slowed down the
high demand for bodies at medical schools, not only in Ohio,

(17:39):
but also across the United States and outside of the
United States as well. And donated bodies to made a
big impact on supply. Under the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act
of the Ohio Revised Code, body donations, also called anatomical donations,
became legal and commonplace at medical schools in the state,
making names profession they're obsolete. Now that we just mentioned

(18:08):
embalming methods, right time for embalming fluid. I'm for embalming fluid.
Let's talk about what we're going to tip back for Williams.
I think this one will surprise you. The name is horrifying,
so just know that upfront, because I'm calling it corpse juice.

(18:30):
I'm playing a little bit with this and that I
kept thinking about the idea of someone that would dress
a corpse and play act in entire scenario as they
drove along. There was a whole dialogue there, right, he
had scenes written in his head to me that was
all very funny, and so I thought it would be
funny like that scene. Right. It's hilarious, but it is

(18:52):
also grizzly as well when you think about it. We
laugh a little bit in these episodes because there's some
of it really truly is on one level laughable, but
it's grizzly laughable. It's terrible. And so I wanted to
come up with a drink that sounded and even looks
a little like huh, but it's amazingly delicious. I'm gonna

(19:13):
surprise you out of the gate with what the first
ingredient is. I can't because you'll be like, wait, oh,
this doesn't seem like where we're going. First, You're gonna
chop some watermelon. It's as if I have conjured this
in the universe. So watermelon is one of my favorite things,
and I am looking more and more and more and

(19:34):
more and more now that it's springtime to watermelon. So
I am with you on it. That's exactly where I'm at.
We are on the precipice here in the northern hemisphere
of summer coming, and I also want to just have
good summer drinks at ready. But this one is fun.
So you're gonna chop some watermelon. You don't want uniform
slices or cubes. You want it to look a little chunky,

(19:58):
and you're gonna retain the juice along with your chopped
fruit and set it aside. You don't need a ton
of it. I would say a couple of table spoons,
and you have more than enough. You can also do
it the lazy way, which I have done, which is
you buy a bunch of watermelon and chop it, or
you buy pre chopped watermelon and you leave the juice
and debris in the bottom of your bowl or wherever.

(20:20):
I just use that. At the end. I eat watermelon
at an alarming rate, so there's always plenty of this
around the house. So then you'll have your little couple
of tablespoons of sliced, chopped, chunked up watermelon and it's juice.
Set that aside and into a glass with ice. You're
gonna pour an ounce and a half of vodka. If
you have a fruit infused vodka, this is a great

(20:41):
time to pull it out. I have one that is
watermelon and basil. Oh my god, that sounds delicious, Yes, delicious,
And onto that. I just poured four ish ounces of
ginger ale and then you just pour in your watermelon
juice in the slurry, and so as it's falling to
the bottom of the glass, it looks like viscera, and
it looks a little like there's chunks of flesh in it.

(21:04):
But it is so beautiful and taste like summer. I'm
I'm so conflicted here with it. I'm like, if you
started talking about chunks going and I'm like, oh my god,
this is called corpus juice and has chunks and it
is going to be fantastic and horrible. It's so good
I first tried it. I will tell you in case
anyone is listening and they're like, I know what I'll do.

(21:26):
You could do this, Um, you might be tempted to
throw your watermelon in a blender or food processor. I
found that came out too smooth. You wanted a little
chunkier than that. If you want to take away that
sort of gruesome association. You could just pure it or whatever.
That will work fine. Obviously, the mocktail on this is easy.

(21:48):
Just leave out the vodka, You're fine. Just the ginger
ale with the chunks of fruit in it is pretty
darn delicious. I'm gonna keep saying the word chunks just
to watch Maria's face squeak up every time. Chunky juice.
It's so good, it's so delicious. I mean, this is
like one of the simplest ones we've ever done. And
as you're sipping in and you get to the end,

(22:09):
because they fall to the bottom, chunks, you'r chunks, Maria,
those small ones. Towards the end, we'll start to creep
into your SIPs and then you're reminded that you're drinking
corpse juice, old man chunks. Delicious delicious is what I'm saying.
So yes, I will drink this in mocktail form all

(22:30):
day long, because delicious. I'm gonna go ahead and say
that Mary I would serve this to her, I'd be like, hey,
I don't think she'd like it. She would be like,
please just give me a glass and eight ounce glass
of whiskey. I don't mess with smaller portions. We could
say to her, but the scruvy, that's good for you.
This is like a nutritional cocktail exactly. There's chunks in it,

(22:52):
like Okay, enough of the chunky talk. So gross, got Maria?
What why it's wrong with you? Elicio? That all being said,
this is a super yummy one. I'm gonna go have
another one here in a minute. Thank you for spending
this time with us. I hope you have enjoyed this

(23:14):
story of old Cunney and his strange, strange vocation. We
will be right back here next week with another episode
of Criminalia, and we hope you join us. Criminalia is
a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with I

(23:36):
Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio, please
visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows,