The Humble Undertaker - Nov. ‘96 America’s Civil War Feature

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THE HUMBLE UNDERTAKERPERFORMED A DISTASTEFUL BUTALL TOO NECESSARY ROLE DURING
THE CIVIL WAR.

By James C. Lee

Almost overnight, the Civil War turned Washington, D.C., into a frenzy, with thousands of soldiers, camps, supply dumps,horses, artillery parks and new government offices vying for space in the capital city.

Riding down Pennsylvania Avenue from the Capitol, a visitor found himself in the middle of constant activity, sharing the dusty road with soldiers and street vendors. In one shop a lady could buy a pair of satin slippers, while next door a load of hay was for sale.

Nearby, John Ford had just opened a new theater. Free concerts were given at the White House, and anyone could step up to the president and shake his hand, or watch him work at his desk. But always and everywhere, there was the shadow of war.

Washington was one of the worst pestholes. Well water was often contaminated by nearby latrines; Constitution Avenue was an open sewer filled with dead animals; and the Potomac River was already so polluted that President Abraham Lincoln had become ill from eating its fish. Garbage was eaten by pigs rooting openly in the streets. Hospitals had overflowing bedpans in the wards, and there were piles of trash on the grounds outside–no wonder that typhoid, dysentery and malaria spread everywhere.

Of all the people affected by the Civil War, little has been written about the one person without whose help the war would have been an even greater horror than it was–the Civil War undertaker.

Until the outbreak of the Civil War, methods to delay body decomposition consisted mainly of ice-cooling or encasing bodies in air-tight receptacles. Thomas Holmes, known as the father of embalming, conducted considerable research on embalming fluids to preserve cadavers for the few medical schools around the country. Holmes was registered in the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University in New York and had graduated as a medical surgeon.

Holmes criticized the use of poisonous compounds in the embalming fluids common at the time, since they caused many deaths and injuries to medical students during routine dissection at medical schools. His service as a New York City coroner in the late 1850s provided added opportunities for Holmes to pursue his own investigations and experiments into embalming fluids. By the outbreak of the Civil War, he had developed a safe embalming fluid, without poisons, and it was sold to many surgeons, anatomists and undertakers throughout the country.

Holmes’ reputation as an undertaker skyrocketed with his embalming of Colonel Elmer E. Ellsworth, a former clerk in Lincoln’s Springfield law office who had also organized Zouave regiments in Chicago and New York.

On the morning of May 24, 1861, Ellsworth was shot and killed in Alexandria, Va., by a Southern-leaning innkeeper while attempting to remove the man’s Confederate flag. Lincoln, distraught, invited the Zouaves to take the body to the White House for the funeral service. It was Holmes’ good fortune, through the intercession of Secretary of State William Seward, to receive permission to embalm the body.

The embalming took place at the Washington Navy Yard and was quite successful. Cabinet members, senators and distinguished citizens in large numbers came to pay their respects. When Mrs. Lincoln viewed the body, she found Ellsworth’s face as natural as if he were merely enjoying a brief and pleasant sleep.

Washington newspapers published a glowing account of Ellsworth’s funeral, and Holmes’ reputation as a successful embalmer and undertaker was established in the nation’s capital. As the war progressed and casualties mounted, Holmes’ services were all too greatly in demand.

Through his own efforts and those of other undertakers and aspiring embalming surgeons he had trained, Holmes’ day-to-day operations reached substantial proportions. Most of the undertakers of the day were trained to use his embalming instruments and to purchase his embalming fluid at $3 per gallon.

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