![]() ![]() Five cents a visit, and Johnson was on an entrepreneurial roll. This man decided to showcase poor Elmer’s embalmed body to the intrigued public, calling them to shove pennies in his lifeless mouth. Fate had been hard on Elmer, but destiny’s betrayal was nothing compared to the incompassion of fellow men. ![]() He covered Elmer’s body in an arsenic laced balm to preserve it, which would mummify the corpse for years to come. The corpse lay unattended, until the funeral director Joseph L Johnson decided to take charge. ![]() A Career of Infamy in DeathĮlmer was as alone in death as in life. The botched robberies forced men of law to track him down as a priority, and a drunken and diseased Elmer was killed in a shootout in a barn with gunshots to his chest. He’d conspicuously blow up banks, only to find the vaults inside remaining unharmed and hijacked trains on false alarms to find the safes inside empty. He learnt about explosives at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, but as fate would have it the knowledge was used only to enjoy a fleeting career as a safe robber. Shaken by the reality of his origins, the young man took to boozing, finding inconsistent work as a zinc miner, plumber and soldier in the west. This was because after passing away in 1911, the corpse of Elmer McCurdy continued to pass along the hands of men until 1977 creating showbiz for the rich and pennies for the opportunists.īorn in 1880, McCurdy was an orphan raised by his aunt and uncle in his birth city, Maine. He was a man who crawled through a desultory career in his life, but gained fame and prosperity in death. One such orphaned vagabond was Elmer McCurdy, the ghost of whose life came back to haunt the living some 60 years after his death. But the homeless, unfamiliar and the strange often remain unclaimed, left to wander the streets in death as in life. What happens to our bodies when we die? Some are buried with grandeur in oakwood caskets, some cremated on holy pyres of amber flames. ![]()
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