On 17 April 1875, Anna Williams of 313 Canal Street in Richmond heard a noise and went outside to investigate only to discover a plank pulled off of her hen house and a man “breaking chicken necks.”   Emmet W. Ruffin, a neighbor enlisted to assist her, later testified as to what happened next., “I jumped back and drew my knife and waited for him to come out…. Just then the man jumped out of the chicken house and threw a handful of sand or dirt in my eyes…. As soon as I got the sand out of my eyes, I went after him… and struck him with the knife as he was going over the fence.”  The thief dropped some of the chickens inside the yard, but Ruffin continued to follow him.  Shortly, a chase ensued, with people joining in and crying “murder” and “thief.”   Some members of the group began throwing stones.  One struck the thief on the side of his head knocking him to the ground.  The chicken thief, later identified as Robert Bland, never got back up.

The Richmond coroner’s statement reveals that the chicken thief came to his death from a stab wound, inflicted by Emmet W. Ruffin, received while engaged in stealing chickens. The jury was of the opinion that Ruffin “[deserved] the thanks of the community for his action under the circumstances.”

The testimony and investigation into the death of Robert Bland, dated 18 April 1875, can be found in the Richmond Coroners’ Inquisitions. The collection is available at the Library of Virginia but is currently closed for processing.

In April 2013, almost 138 years later, chickens are again making headlines in the city of Richmond.  City Council will be considering an ordinance that would allow residents to have chickens, and will vote on it on 8 April. A pro-hen group, Chickunz, along with other local chicken advocates, is helping spearhead this effort. 

As far as stealing hens goes, as Robert Bland discovered chickens do come home to roost. 

-Mary Dean Carter, Local Records Archival Assistant

In 1879, Charles C. Curtis was working at the retail store of Wingo, Ellett, and Crump at 1000 Main Street in Richmond.  A customer, a young lady named Isabel Cottrell, visited the store to try on a pair of shoes, and found Mr. Curtis’s behavior “exceedingly offensive.” Instead of allowing her to put the shoes on, he insisted on holding the shoe for her to put her foot in and on buttoning the shoe after she had “begged him” to let her do it herself.  She encountered Mr. Curtis on a second visit to pick up a pair of shoes she had ordered, and he insisted that she try them on in the store. Cottrell instead took the shoes home.

On a third visit, she took both pairs of shoes back to the store “with the purpose of leaving one pair of shoes and having the heels of the other plated.”  Cotrell claimed Curtis opened the bundle of shoes and remarked, in a rather impertinent way, “what a pretty little shoe, I certainly would like to put them on you.  I don’t see how you can walk with such a foot.”  Ms. Cottrell “was very much provoked, and told him he would oblige [her] by not commenting on [her] foot.”  She was further annoyed when Curtis accompanied her to the phaeton, where a friend was waiting. He “gave my arm a very severe grip,” Cottrell remarked to her friend and claimed that she would never go into the store again as long as he was employed there.  She considered Curtis “not only unrefined, but insulting.” She then told her “intimate acquaintance,” John E. Poindexter, of these circumstances, and he “seemed very angry” and declared that he would “have to horsewhip the fellow.” 

Later, John Poindexter got his brother and went to the shoe store to confront Curtis.  After being sure that Curtis was the man he was looking for, he “pulled out a riding whip and struck Curtis eight or ten times.” Poindexter accused him of “insulting a lady,” and Curtis claimed to “have no knowledge of it, but if he had, he begged her pardon.”  After another salesman in the store intervened, the brothers left the store.

After the confrontation, Curtis decided to seek the advice of friends upon this “point of honor.”  After explaining the incident, Tazewell Ellet told him “the proper thing to do is…to go and kill him.”  But another friend, Francis McGuire, replied that he “cannot do that, his character as a Christian and member of the church prevents it.”  After Curtis acknowledged that he could not kill Poindexter, McGuire told him, “you must see him at once and demand a full and immediate apology, and if not given…beat him.”  McGuire then offered to accompany him “to stand by [him] and see fair play.”  They both went to Poindexter’s place of business to confront him on 3 March 1879.  Curtis, carrying a stick, walked toward Poindexter and demanded an apology.  Poindexter replied, “If you strike me with that stick, I will shoot you.”  Curtis said, “I am unarmed.”  McGuire then urged Curtis on by saying, “hit him, hit him, knock him in the head, or kill him, kill him…”  As Curtis advanced on Poindexter and struck him with the stick, Poindexter began firing until Curtis fell.  At which point, Poindexter said “I didn’t want to shoot him…let’s try and do something for the man.” 

Charles C. Curtis died of the effects of pistol shot wounds on 4 March 1879. The testimony and investigation into his death can be found in the Richmond Coroners’ Inquisitions, dated 4 March 1879. The collection is available at the Library of Virginia but is currently closed for processing.

We were not alone here at the Library of Virginia in finding this story intriguing. Reporter Herbert T. Ezekiel also remarked on the story in his The Recollections of a Virginia Newspaper Man, published in 1920. Ezekiel found the story noteworthy because Poindexter’s whipping of Curtis was the last instance of cowhiding, or horsewhipping, on record in the state of Virginia before the State Legislature passed a law making it a felony.

-Mary Dean Carter, Local Records Archival Assistant

On 15 May 1883, a seemingly intoxicated man approached Richard Stevens and his group of friends as they were standing together at 513 N. 17^th Street in Richmond’s Church Hill area. The man was James Harris, a fortune teller or maybe just a swindler, who asked if he could tell their fortunes. Most of the group declined, but Richard Stevens agreed, and they went to a nearby passageway after Mr. Harris suggested they find a more private location. To the skeptic’s delight, this fortune teller was not able to see his own unfortunate end coming.

The pair settled in on a bench, but before he would tell Stevens’ fortune, Harris requested payment. Stevens informed him he would give him the money only after he told his fortune, but the fortune teller claimed, “I’ve been bit too often.”  James Harris then got up and started backwards, staggering. Richard Stevens provided an eyewitness account of the events that followed:

“He had a stick with a crooked handle which he nearly dropped, and I tried to help him with it by catching hold of the …end. He was intoxicated and was at that time on the edge of the doorsill and seemed to have such a slender hold on to his end of the stick that I aimed to catch [him] by his garments to prevent him from falling, but he fell over with my weight upon him and struck his head against the curbstone, both of our hats rolling out in the street. I caught hold of the man…and tried to lift him when I remarked…, ‘Good God, I believe this man is dead, run and bring some water to throw on him.’” Someone brought a pitcher of water to throw upon him, and John Sweeney, a nearby shop owner, “took the water and bathed his head, but found it was of no use, and walked away.”

On that fateful day in May perhaps fortune teller James Harris should have been more concerned about his own future prospects instead of those of Richard Stevens and his friends. The Richmond (City) Coroners’ Inquisition, 22 May 1883, taken at the city’s almshouse, determined that Harris died from a fracture of the skull, inflicted by an accidental fall. The Richmond (City) Coroners’ Inquisitions are currently closed for processing.

-Mary Dean Carter, Local Records Archival Assistant

On the night of 4 August 1882, James M. Duesbury heard pistol shots coming from the nearby home of Christopher Goode and ran to see what the matter was. Goode, a resident of Richmond, Virginia, lived at 709 West Marshall behind what is now the Siegel Center near Virginia Commonwealth University. When Duesbury arrived at the home, Goode stated “I have shot a man; here he is lying down on the floor.” When Duesbury asked why he shot him, he answered, “I caught him on top of my wife.” Policeman Lewis Frayser arrived at the scene and found Winston Robinson “lying on the floor with his pants and drawers down to his knees”  and met Mahala Goode, the wife, in a dress that was “very much disarranged” and “bleeding very freely” from the gunshot wounds she accidentally received during the altercation.

In his testimony to police, Christopher Goode stated, “My God Master, I couldn’t help it to save my life, I shot him and couldn’t help it.”  Mr. Goode further elaborated, explaining that he had been “under the porch and heard them hugging and kissing” and heard his wife invite Robinson upstairs, but Robinson declined saying he “didn’t care about going upstairs” because “if the old man came there would be a fight and one or the other would be killed.”  When Goode heard them get up and go into the parlor, “he took his shoes off and raised the basement window and crept very lightly up the steps and found the lamp turned down very low.”  He turned the light on and discovered his wife and Robinson on the floor and that is when he began firing. Robinson and Mahala both jumped up and advanced towards Goode, who continued to fire. Robinson seized Goode around the neck. Goode fired again, this time hitting his target.

Richmond’s The Daily Dispatch reported the story on 6 August 1882, referring to it as “The Colored Shooting Affair” and describing Christopher Goode as a “quiet, inoffensive man.” We never learn the rest of the story from either newspaper accounts or the 5 August 1882 Richmond (City) Coroner’s Inquisition.  All we know is that the inquisition concluded that Winston Robinson came to his death from the “effect of a pistol shot wound inflicted by Christopher Goode because of criminal relations between him and the said Goode’s wife and they [the jurors] are of the opinion that the killing was eminently proper.”

-Mary Dean Carter, Local Records Archival Assistant

Anatomical dissection is a matter of course for today’s medical student. Those who selflessly donate their bodies to science are treated with utmost respect for the critical service that they provide to burgeoning doctors and surgeons. Medical schools in the 19^th century had a more difficult time with this aspect of education and often had to turn to “anatomical men” or “resurrectionists” to procure cadavers for study by their students. Virginia schools had no legal means of acquiring bodies until 1884 when legislation established the state anatomical board and made the bodies of prisoners and the indigent available for study. An August article in Style Weekly piqued the interest of some Library of Virginia (LVA) archivists, which turned up some interesting archival records about Richmond’s own “anatomical man,” Chris Baker.

Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) professor Shawn Utsey has endeavored to uncover the thus-far unknown history of Baker’s work for the Medical College of Virginia (MCV). In that effort, he has combed the archives of MCV and the LVA as well as other sources. So far revealed is that from sometime after the Civil War until just after World War I, Baker worked as a janitor in MCV’s Egyptian Building. However, his duties went far beyond the tidying of the dissection room. With the tacit approval of the college, Baker and his cohorts (often including young medical students) trolled African American cemeteries, the Alms House, and other locales of the poor and anonymous to procure the newly deceased for study. For this service, MCV paid Baker up to $10 per body, depending on condition.

In December of both 1882 and 1883, Baker and others were arrested for disinterring corpses. The Richmond City Ended Causes, in the Local Government Records collection at the Library of Virginia, contain the indictments from 1882 for offenses at Oakwood and Sycamore cemeteries. Illustrating the unspoken approval of officials, Baker and his companions were convicted in Richmond court on 20 December 1882 and pardoned by Governor William Cameron the next day, a speedy exoneration indeed. In addition to the local court records and state pardon papers, numerous newspaper articles on Baker and body-snatching can be found in the Richmond newspapers of the period. Several relevant titles are part of the LVA’s contribution to the National Digital Newspaper Project and are keyword searchable in Chronicling America.

It is unclear whether Baker was a freedman or a slave owned by MCV. Some records indicate that his parents also worked at the college, but again it is unclear whether they were enslaved or free. In a strikingly similar case described in Bones in the Basement: Postmortem Racism in Nineteenth-Century Medical Training (1998), the Medical College of Georgia purchased a slave named Grandison Harris to procure their bodies for dissection. Like Baker, Harris was somewhat respected by the white population, especially the medical community, but reviled by African Americans. In Richmond, the latter group looked upon Baker as a ghoul for his nocturnal activities. So much an outcast, Baker considered himself a prisoner of the Egyptian Building, fearing reprisal if he ventured too far beyond its environs.

Dr. Utsey’s efforts to uncover Chris Baker’s story will culminate in a documentary film in the near future. In addition to discovering revealing records in the archives, Utsey has interviewed several Richmond residents who recall being told cautionary tales about “Old Chris” and what would happen if he caught you out after dark.

The General Assembly enacted legislation in 1884 creating the state anatomical board and empowering it to procure bodies for dissection from the penitentiary, county jails and alms houses, and other public institutions holding corpses to be buried at government expense. Despite this new legal source of cadavers, Chris Baker was again thrust into the spotlight when MCV took possession of the body of executed prisoner Solomon Marable. The 1 August 1896 issue of The Richmond Planet recounts the efforts of a group of angry citizens, including publisher John Mitchell Jr., to reclaim the body, which had been transported to the college and packed in a barrel of salt for preservation. Included in the article are sketches made by Mitchell of the scenes that the group encountered that night.

Chris Baker’s clandestine labors, considered ghastly by our modern-day sensibilities, provided a valuable service to the medical profession. A formidable character, Baker was said to have ruled the dissection room and possessed considerable knowledge of human anatomy. One professor even referred to MCV in a 1898 newspaper article as “Chris Baker’s College.” Though his macabre errands required him to creep through the inky, gas-lit night of 19^th century Richmond, shovel and bag in hand, the archival collections of the capital city have shed new light on Richmond’s “resurrectionist.”

 -Vince Brooks, Senior Local Records Archivist