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.Eventually the physician agreed.Ol-cott, drawing on his legal training and his New York City social con-nections, investigated applicable laws, obtained the necessary permits,and arranged for a panel of theological, economic, sanitary, and tech-nological experts to present the cremationist case.He also gathereda slightly less committed cadre of scientists, clergymen, educators, andjournalists to witness the spectacle to determine, in his words,The Cremation of Baron De Palm29“(a) Whether cremation was really a scientific method of sepulture;(b) Whether it was cheaper than burial; (c) Whether it offered any re-pugnant features; (d) How long it would take to incinerate a humanbody.”21A Ghastly SightThe corpse of Baron De Palm had been injected with arsenic as a pre-servative before his May funeral, but as the search for a crematorydragged on it was determined that stronger stuff would be necessary ifthe corpse was to keep until the cremation.Mr.August Buckhorst, anundertaker from Roosevelt Hospital (where the baron had died), wascalled in to embalm.“A big, burly, red-faced, heavy mostached [ sic]German,” Buckhorst was the sort of man who would have been con-sidered a live wire if he had not earned his keep as an undertaker, andhe took on his historic task with what might be described as gleedaubed with only a thin veneer of professionalism.One newspaper re-port claimed the embalming was performed “in the Egyptian fashion,”but Buckhorst’s efforts were far more haphazard than the techniques ofthe mummifiers of the Nile.22Embalming had received a boost in the United States during the CivilWar as battlefield medics on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line ex-perimented with various techniques to preserve the war dead longenough to ship them back to their families for burial.By 1876, however,the practice was not yet routinized, so Buckhorst was free to freelance.And freelance he did.After extracting the guts out of the body, hepacked the cavity and covered the skin with his own concoction ofpotter’s clay and crystallized carbolic acid—“the best way to keep theold man,” he said.He then had the embalmed corpse placed in a rose-wood casket and deposited in a vault in a Lutheran cemetery in Wil-liamsburg, New York.23The tincture apparently did the trick.Four months later, in late No-vember, a proud Buckhorst led a group of reporters to the vault to in-spect the body, which was now slated to be cremated during the firstweek of December.One journalist called it “a ghastly sight,” but allagreed the embalming was a success.Despite some shrinking and discol-oration, the baron’s distinctive visage remained recognizable, his dapperwhiskers were wonderfully preserved, and his eyes displayed “an ap-pearance of life.” Neither corpse nor coffin, moreover, emitted badodors.At one point in the inspection Buckhorst rapped the deceased on30Birth, 1874–1896the head, proclaiming him “as tough as sole leather.” “He ain’t as dry ashe ought to be,” he concluded, “But I guess he’ll burn nicely.”24He almost didn’t.After being placed, coffin and all, into a plainwooden box for shipping, the baron’s remains were transported on theevening of December 4 via a series of ferries and other conveyances tothe Pennsylvania Railroad depot at Jersey City.There they were met byColonel Olcott and a slate of Theosophists, hospital representatives,health officials, doctors, lawyers, and journalists assembled for the pil-grimage.On the sleeping car that evening Olcott played the charminghost, winning over to the cremation cause at least two elderly womenand one cub journalist.Olcott’s arguments, one said, were persuasiveenough “to convert the most stubborn lover of graveyard flowers.toan inveterate cremationist.” The next morning, his two female convertsat his side, Olcott prophesied (incorrectly, it would turn out) that the“fair sex” would soon become the cause’s most passionate advocates,“for with them the preservation of their beauty was the supreme, as itwas the last thought of their lives; and they could not bear to think oftheir own beautiful forms having to be subjected to the hideous processof slow putrefaction.” When the train pulled into Pittsburgh, however,this bucolic scene veered sharply in the direction of farce.25Mr.Buckhorst was the first to pronounce the body missing.“Howcan we have a cremation without a corpse?” he exclaimed as baggagehandlers, in a macabre game of hide-and-seek, frantically searched forcargo that had somehow failed to board the Washington-bound train.Just as the undertaker was beginning to suspect theft at the hands of apro-burial zealot, the body magically reappeared.Buckhorst breathed asigh of relief, then lamented that the hunt had caused him to miss hisbreakfast.Around noon on December 5 the train pulled into the “LittleWashington” depot, with the star of the show now securely on board [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]