Conspirators' bodies

[L Verge]

(11-08-2015 06:21 PM)Houmes Wrote:  

(11-08-2015 09:15 AM)maharba Wrote:  I don't like the concept of desecrating anyone's remains or their graves. Union soldiers preventing CSA widows from attending the graves of their husbands, etc. And contrast with Lincoln's case. He was carefully embalmed with something like a zinc chloride solution. But then, on that 2 week funeral train, a mortician traveled with it, and he had to re-embalm Lincoln several more times before it was over. And there is something unsettling to me, the thought of poor Lincoln now under tons of cement. At some level, it communicates to me that he may not be at ease and rest. First the room crammed full of Lincoln fans as he perished, then the overblown train odyssey and repumped with preservatives, then his body being moved so many times, only to end up under 10 tons of concrete. It was wrong at every turn.

I'm curious what your reference was that Lincoln's body was "reembalmed several times" during the return trip to Springfield. Most articles report the staff of Brown & Alexander provided only cosmetic services due to the skin darkening, along with dirt and dust acquired when moving the coffin and during the frequent viewings.

Blaine - there is one sentence on the Chicago Historical website that states that the embalmers accompanied the body and reembalmed it several times. http://www.chicagohistory.org/wetwithblo...mains5.htm This is the only time I remember ever seeing this - and I doubt it.

I have no intentions of learning the embalming process; but after a guided tour of a very old funeral home here in D.C. many years ago, it is my understanding that (at least in the 1860s) the process left the body as cold and hard as marble. How did one insert the proper equipment and get the fluids to move once the initial embalming was/is done?

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/histo...cross.html Good description from the relatively new book by Richard Fox about Lincoln's Body.