Cincinnati's "Old Cunny": A Notorious Purveyor of Human Flesh — Text and Context

Diction of Disrepute

Edwards’s vocabulary consistently frames body snatching as a moral and criminal offense. He uses terms such as “ghoulish resurrectionists,” “nefarious and odious practice,” and “depraved characters.” The word “resurrectionist” itself, a euphemism from the period, appears repeatedly, signaling both the trade’s clandestine nature and its grim association with grave robbing. The author also employs legalistic phrasing: “principals or accessories to the crime of body snatching.” This diction reflects the dual perspective of the article—part historical chronicle, part condemnation of a practice that anatomy laws later rendered obsolete.

Newspaper Voices as Evidence

The narrative is built on excerpts from Cincinnati newspapers: the Daily Gazette, the Daily Enquirer, and the Ohio State Journal. Edwards quotes these sources directly, letting their language carry the story. For example, a news item from December 1878 reports the arrest of “a gang of resurrectionists consisting of five persons,” including “the widow of Cunningham, of former notoriety in this business.” The reliance on journalistic accounts gives the pamphlet a documentary texture, though Edwards does not verify every claim independently. He notes when a detail—such as the fate of Cunningham’s skeleton—has been “verified by a statement received recently” from the University of Cincinnati.

The Anatomy of a Trade

Edwards explains the mechanics of the body-snatching economy with precision. Medical colleges procured cadavers through intermediaries, typically janitors, so that professors remained ignorant of the bodies’ origins. This arrangement, he argues, “absolved” anatomists of legal culpability. The pamphlet traces Cunningham’s career from his death in 1871 (or 1872) to the eventual housing of his skeleton in a medical museum. Edwards also notes that Cunningham sold his own body to the Medical College of Ohio before his death, and that his widow allegedly received an extra five dollars for “his giant carcass.” Such details underscore the commodification of human remains.

Legislative Omission and Moral Calculus

In the closing paragraphs, Edwards shifts from narrative to argument. He contends that the “sins of commission” of resurrectionists were enabled by “sins of omission of the public and of their representatives in the legislative halls,” who refused to pass anatomy laws. This moral calculus reframes the story: the real culprits, in Edwards’s view, were those who failed to provide a legal supply of cadavers for medical education. The pamphlet thus serves not only as a biography of a criminal but as a brief for the necessity of anatomy acts. The final sentence notes that such laws “abolished the need for resurrectionists,” a quiet but pointed conclusion.

Readers should approach this pamphlet as a historical document shaped by its origins in a medical journal. Edwards writes as an anatomist and historian, not a sensationalist, but he reproduces the lurid language of his sources without comment. The text is valuable for its glimpses into nineteenth-century medical ethics, the underground economy of body snatching, and the rhetorical strategies used to condemn or excuse it. The brevity of the work—roughly 6,000 words—makes it a concise entry point into a grisly chapter of American medical history.

Reading about Cunningham’s ledger-like trade, I remembered my grandfather’s old courthouse stories, the way people spoke of bodies as property. It felt like unearthing a cold, clinical voice from another century, so much like the measured arguments I found in The Trial of Jesus from a Lawyer's Standpoint, Vol. 1 (of 2) The Hebrew Trial — Edition Insights, where law and flesh wrestle quietly in the margins.