An alleged thief, who died in a prison and was accidentally mummified and kept in a funeral home, will finally be buried after 128 years.
The true identity of the man was unknown for many years, until now, when his real name will be inscribed on the tombstone of his grave.
“Stoneman Willie” as the man has been known in death, since he refused to provide his real name when he was sick — died in November 1895 and his body has remained in the same funeral home in Reading, Pennsylvania ever since.
On Saturday, his body will receive its final rites and be carried by procession to the nearby Forest Hills Memorial Park for burial.
The corpse will be dressed in a tuxedo “befitting what a gentleman in 1895 would have been dressed in for burial,” according to the funeral home, whose owners have tried for years to secure the mummy’s proper burial.
According to local historian George M. Meiser XI, the body was preserved shortly after death by Theodor Auman, a mortician who at the time was experimenting with innovative arterial embalming. The technique was still relatively new in the late 19th century, when corpses were frequently stored on ice until burial.
According to Meiser, nobody claimed the body — and so Auman kept the corpse to judge the effectiveness of his experimental technique on preserving bodies.
Stoneman Willie’s body outlasted even Auman in the undertaker’s own funeral home, where the body went on to develop local status as a cult curiosity.
“We don’t refer to him as a mummy. We refer to him as our friend Willie,” Kyle Blankenbiller, funeral director at Theo C. Auman Funeral Home, told Reuters. “He has just been become such an icon, such a storied part of not only Reading’s past but certainly its present.”
The embalming technique has preserved the body remarkably well — although Meiser said its skin has darkened considerably since he first visited the corpse in the 1950s.
In 1896, one newspaper report described Stoneman Willie as “white as wax.” Today, the mummy has taken on a more leathery hue.
For more than a century, Willie’s true identity has also been shrouded in mystery. At the time of his death, local newspapers reported the mustachioed 37-year-old, who had been accused of theft and previously charged with drunkenness, refused to reveal his true identity to avoid disgracing his family.
According to Meiser, the body belonged to an alleged thief who provided the false name of James Penn when he was arrested for theft in West Reading, Pa., in October 1895.
A news item published in the Reading Times that month reported that the “alleged Philadelphia crook” was taken to prison after being discovered under a bed in a local boardinghouse with a gold watch, razor and “small sum of money” on his person — none of which belonged to him.
The following month, the 37-year-old died after being seized by a violent delirium, battling with “gastritis” that worsened into “acute uramia,” refusing until the end to identify himself out of shame on behalf of his family, local outlets reported. According to Meiser, he probably died of advanced alcoholism.
“When the end was near he was asked about his relatives. He said that his name was not James Penn, but refused to give his correct name,” the Philadelphia Times reported on Nov. 21, 1895. “He said that he was a single man and was born in Ireland: that his relatives resided in New York State. He refused to name the place, saying he didn’t want them to be disgraced.”
Meiser, who will speak at Saturday’s service, said the closing of the coffin will mark the end to Stoneman Willie’s 128-year wait. He said: “After all these years, the vigil concludes.”
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