Morgue

“ The central morgue was formerly a school-house, and the desks are used as biers for the dead bodies. Three of the former pupils yesterday lay on the desks dead, with white pieces of paper pinned on to the white sheets that covered them, giving their names.
Looking for Their Loved Ones.
But what touching scenes are enacted every hour about this mournful building. Outside the sharp voices of the sentinels are constantly shouting: "Move on." Inside, weeping women and sad-faced, hollow-eyed men are bending over loved and familiar faces. ”

“ There is nothing beautiful nor impressive about the church; the interior is bare and dingy, every one walks about wearing his hat, without any outward respect for the place or its occupants; people rush down the steps leading to the burial vaults, crowd against each other, peer through the iron bars of the gates at the coffins in the dusky interior, with the same eager curiosity as if viewing the victims at a morgue. ”

“ Away from the devastation in the valley and the gloomy scenes along the river, on Prospect Hill, stands the school-house, the morgue of the unidentified dead. People do not go there unless they are hunting for a friend or relative. ”

“ The blood of victims still trickled in runlets between the paving stones where we walked, and there were mangled bodies stretched on the floor of an improvised morgue across the way—mainly bodies of poor working women, and one, I heard, the body of a widow with half a dozen children, who now would be doubly orphaned, since their father was dead at the Front. ”

“ The morgue keeper would be down early next morning to sew up the coroner's cut, lest his infraction of the rules be discovered by some early-prowling undertaker. The woman's family would come for their dead. I only wanted her heart, anyway. The woman's family? As I returned to the morgue, locking the little door behind me. I recalled what the hospital historian had told me of the family. Likely as not, she would be in her niche another day or two until the matter could be settled amicably. ”

“ Many Dead Still in the Ruins.
The ruins still shelter a ghastly load of dead. Every hour at least one new body is uncovered and borne on a rough stretcher to some one of the many [Pg 444] morgues. The sight loses none of its sadness and pathos by its commonness; only the horror is gone, giving place to apathy and stupor. Stalwart men, in mud-stained, working clothes, bring up the body, the face covered with a cloth. The crowds part and gaze at the burned corpse as it passes. At the morgue it is examined for identification, washed and prepared for burial. ”

“ Near the Post-office is the morgue for that part of the city, and other lines of waiting people reach out from there, anxious for a glimpse at the contents of the twenty-five coffins ranged in lines in front of the school-building, that does duty for a dead-house. Only those who have business are admitted, but the number is never a small one. ”

“ Around her neck she had a black band, which gave her a sort of necklet of shadow. She was a girl who had hanged herself in a fit of love madness.
Each morning, while Laurent was there, he heard behind him the coming and going of the public who entered and left.
The morgue is a sight within reach of everybody, and one to which passers-by, rich and poor alike, treat themselves. The door stands open, and all are free to enter. There are admirers of the scene who go out of their way so as not to miss one of these performances of death. ”

“ Only the hardiest can bear to enter the Morgue this morning, so overwhelming is the dreadful stench. The undertakers even, after hurriedly performing their task of washing a dead body and preparing it for burial, retreat to the yard to await the arrival of the next ghastly find. A strict order is now in force that all bodies should be interred only when it becomes impossible to longer preserve them from absolute putrefaction. There is no iron-clad rule. ”

“ About and around the slabs whereon the human bodies lay, in bottles and in plates, this material which had no place except in the cabinets of a laboratory was inhumanly displayed in profusion, close to corpses for which a morgue is expected to provide some degree of reverential care. ”

“ The papers, of course, had got hold of the story, and we were besieged by newspaper men. From all over the country false clues came pouring in and raised hopes that crumbled again to nothing. Every morgue within a hundred miles, every hospital, had been visited, without result. ”

“ Before I made my sermon at the evening vespers, as is customary at every transport of the dead, I communicated to my parish people that later on a dead Pole would be transported from the hospital to the morgue, because the people want to know who is the dead, who is in the coffin in order to be able to know whether they have any obligation to attend the funeral or not. ”

“ Those who do come have that dazed, miserable look that has fallen to all the residents of the unhappy town. They walk through slowly and look at the bodies and go away looking no sadder nor any less perplexed than when they came in. One of the doctors in charge at the morgue told me that many of these people had come in and looked at the bodies of their own fathers and brothers and gone away without recognizing them, though not at all disfigured. ”

“ The Morgue is an excellently well-contrived establishment. It is a little building, on the bank of the river, where are deposited the bodies of persons found drowned or otherwise accidentally slain. These bodies are laid on an inclined plane, in a space partitioned off by glass doors and windows, stript of part of their clothes, which are hung up over their heads. ”

“ It is the belief of the physicians that a pestilence will be added to the other horrors of the place if such a thing is not done. All day the bodies have been brought to shore. Those that were not recognized were carried on stretchers to the Morgue. One hundred and twenty of the identified bodies were carried over the bridge in one procession. ”

“ I didn't see her until she was brought to the morgue. My phone chimed, and when I thumbed it on, the face of Inspector Kleek, of Homicide South, came on the screen. His heavy eyelids always hang at half mast, giving him a sleepy, bored look and the rest of his fleshy face sags in the same general pattern. "Roy," he said as soon as he could see my face on his own screen, "we just found the little Donahue girl. The meat wagon's taking her down to the morgue now. You want to come down here and look over the scene, or you want to go to the morgue? ”

“ The next day his legless body was upon a marble slab in the morgue.
His fellow-gamblers, hearing of his fate, [Pg 22] begged his body that they might give it a "decent" burial. They removed it to an old out-house and sat up with it the first night. Why do they gaze upon it so often? Why do their hands touch his face and hands? Would they learn a lesson from the cold, deathly touch? The next night, the next, the next, and the next it is alone.
You searchers of the city's offal, you living buzzards who remove the dead and rotten of your kind, fling open the doors! Is that Caleb you find? ”

“ The largest morgue is at the Fourth ward school-house, a two-story brick building which stands just at the edge of the high mark of the flood. The bodies were laid across the school children's desks until they got to be so numerous that there was not room for them, excepting on the floor. Soldiers with crossed bayonets keep out the crowd of curious people who have morbid appetites to gratify. None of these [Pg 235] people are of Johnstown. People of Johnstown do not have time to come to look for friends, and they give the morgue a wide berth. ”

“ Jets of water were playing constantly upon them, and upon hooks the garments of the deceased were hung. The use of La Morgue is to exhibit, for twenty-four hours, the dead bodies which are found in the streets and the river. If no friend in this time recognizes and claims the body, it is buried. ”

“ This sorrow was continued. Day after day brought new scenes. Each train brought in new groups of friends. All were moved by a common feeling, but their sorrow was visible. In that dreadful morgue there were scenes which can never be described; God only knows what agony was in the hearts of many. The sorrowing company trooped in and out, and varied every hour; men and women, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and101 even the children of the lost. Some already were dressed in mourning. ”

“ At present there are said to have been twenty-two hundred bodies recovered. The great difficulties experienced in getting a correct list is the great number of morgues. There is no central bureau of information, and to communicate with the different dead houses is the work of hours. ”

“ That the mourners had seen the coffin containing the body placed in the furnace, and had waited patiently during the incineration? And that later the ashes of the dear departed had been delivered to them, to be finally deposited in an urn in the family vault, where it still is with contents undisturbed? It does not lessen the mystery to [Pg 7] know that the body in the Morgue (or the ashes at the cemetery) represents all that is left of one of our most esteemed citizens, Mr. ”

“ There were only nine unidentified bodies at the Adams street morgue this afternoon, and three additions to the number were made after ten o'clock. Two hundred and eight bodies have been received by the embalmers in charge. The yard of the school house, which was converted into a temporary abode of death, contains large piles of coffins of the cheaper sort. They come from different cities within two or three hundred miles of Johnstown, and after being stacked up they are [Pg 340] pulled out as needed. Coffins are to be seen everywhere about the valley, ready for use when a body is found. ”

“ In this merciful work the police and the soldiers lent their aid, and soon there was a large corps of rescuers actively engaged.
BURYING THE DEAD.
Soon numbers were taken, alive or dead, from the ruins, passing vehicles were pressed into the service, and the labor of mercy went on rapidly, several buildings being quickly converted into temporary hospitals, while the dead were conveyed to the Mechanics’ Pavilion and other available places. Portsmouth Square became for a time a public morgue. ”

“ And all the time all along the valley the work of recovering the dead goes on with undiminished vigor, and as the workmen become accustomed to the terrible scenes they apply themselves more diligently to their duty and labor with a system that produces rapid results.
The great number of bodies not identified seems incredible. Some of these bodies have lain in the different morgues for four days.25 Thousands of people from different parts of the State have seen them, yet they remain unidentified. ”

“ With what shapeless terror does the plague fill the feeble little camp! With what awful solemnity must the dead body invest the frail, small hut! What wailing cries take the place of all the cheerful sounds, and with what hurried dread is the corpse committed to an unremembered grave! ”

“ The old, old men who live in hovels at the entrance of these ancient catacombs, and who, in their age and infirmity, seem waiting here, to be buried themselves, are members of a curious body, called the Royal Hospital, who are the official attendants at funerals. Two of these old spectres totter away, with lighted tapers, to shew the caverns of death—as unconcerned as if they were immortal. ”

“ That no dead body shall be conveyed from a hospital, infirmary, work-house, poor-house, foundling-house, house [Pg 37] of correction, prison, or mort-house, to a school of anatomy, except in a covered bier, and between the hours of four and six in the morning. 8. That after the expiration of twenty-eight days, an officer appointed for this purpose, in each of the four towns above-mentioned, shall cause the remains of the dead to be placed in a coffin, removed from the school of anatomy, where the dead body has been examined, to the mort-house of the town and decently buried. ”

“ The hospital had formerly been a large hotel, and was divided into many rooms, all crowded with sick. The wounded men who were not gangrened were carefully kept apart from those who were. Some of these were frightfully disfigured in the face or head, and presented a ghastly appearance. In rooms filled with fever-patients old men and mere boys lay helpless, struggling with various forms and stages of disease, hoarsely raving, babbling sweetly of home, vainly calling remembered names, or lying in the fatal stupor which precedes death. ”

“ But to face death in a great hospital camp such as this! To be all day and half the night visiting the sick and dying where there are no comforts, very little food, and the medicine has run short; to see that hospital steadily grow,—men on the bed-cots, men lying between them; to watch men struggling in the agonies of the disease, with dying men close beside them; to have to step over one prostrate figure to get to the side of some dying man and whisper words of comfort and prayer, while shrieks of agony come from either side ”

“ Is the corpse generally kept in the living or in the working room?—In the majority of cases the weavers live and work in the same room; the children generally sleep on a bed pushed under the loom. Before a coffin is obtained, the corpse is generally stretched on the bed where the adults have slept. It is a very serious evil in our district, the length of time during which bodies have been kept under such circumstances. I have frequently had to make complaint of it. We are very often complained to by neighbours of the length of time during which the bodies are kept. ”

“ We land, and are borne rapidly along, amid tasteful abodes imbosomed in trees and shrubbery, and adorned with flowers. We pass also the Hospital, a spacious building, where many beds and pillows spread in the open air for purification, denote that disease and death have given a ghastly welcome to some mournful emigrants. ”