Hoosier History Live is an independently produced new media project about Indiana history, integrating podcasts, website, newsletter, and social media, created and produced by Molly Head. Its original content comes initially from a live with call in weekly talk radio show hosted by author and historian Nelson Price. You can hear the show live Saturdays from noon to 1 pm ET. It’s over the air in Central Indiana at WICR 88.7 fm, or you can stream at the WICR HD1 app on your phone.

October 07, 2023

Graverobbing conspiracies of early 1900s

It's a creepy chapter of Indiana's history, but probably appropriate to explore during the season known for all things ghastly. Graverobbing in central Indiana had been an "open secret" for decades before several arrests in 1902 and subsequent trials drew national attention, according to Chris Flook, a public historian and senior lecturer at Ball State University's department of media.

Rings of graverobbers in Indianapolis and Hamilton County had been plundering small cemeteries in the Hoosier capital city and rural cemeteries. They sold corpses to various medical schools that were desperate for cadavers. (These medical schools predated the formation of – and were unaffiliated with – the I.U School of Medicine.) Chris Flook, who will be Nelson's studio guest, describes the grisly conspiracies in a new book, "Indianapolis Graverobbing: A Syndicate of Death".

Key figures in the graverobbing rings included Rufus Cantrell, an itinerant African American preacher known as the "King of the Ghouls", and his competitor, Hampton West, a white, former Confederate soldier who was based in Hamilton County. They were hired to ransack cemeteries by the medical schools, including the Central College of Physicians and Surgeons, that sought cadavers to use in training students. In his book, Chris Flook describes the impact of racism in the arrests and trials of the conspirators.

"Racism played a decisive role in how the participants were adjudicated", Chris notes. "The Black graverobbers received a disproportionate amount of blame and punishment for a criminal conspiracy created, managed and maintained by white doctors at some of the medical schools."

Chris, who writes a column titled "Bygone Muncie History" for the Muncie Star-Press and produces award-winning documentaries, has been a guest on previous "Hoosier History Live" shows. They have included two shows in 2014: a program about county courthouse squares across Indiana and a show about the state's Lenape (Delaware) Indian heritage in connection with a documentary that he produced, "The Lenape on the Wapahani River".

"Body snatching did eventually die out in Indiana after the trials, but not because of them", Chris writes. "Modern embalming methods allowed medical schools to stockpile cadavers."

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Guest Roadtripper and author and travel writer Jane Ammeson tells us that "When Abraham Lincoln supped at the Noon Day Stagecoach Stop and Trading Post on October 31, 1844, the stagecoach stop in Haubstadt, 12 miles north of Evansville, had already been serving travelers for almost two decades. Now called the Log Inn, the former stagecoach stop had opened in 1825, and has been in continuous operation as a restaurant since that time.

Now expanded many times over, the interiors' original hewn log walls and chinking still remain much as it was when Lincoln came to dine and where drivers changed horses on the 21-hour run (if the weather was good) between Evansville and Vincennes. It continues to serve family style meals.

Lincoln had returned to Southwest Indiana for the first time since leaving the state to move to Illinois a quarter-of-a-century before. He was back, campaigning for Henry Clay, a man he had long admired, who was again running for president. Lincoln gave speeches promoting Clay's candidacy in Bruceville, Vincennes, Washington, Boonville and other towns and cities in Southern Indiana. He spoke in front of the spoke in Rockport standing in front of the county and the next day he stopped at what is now the Log Inn, one of the main stagecoach stops on the road between Evansville and Vincennes, Indiana."

Hoosier History Live looks back

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