William O. Webb, now Superintendent of Potter’s Field, who was appointed by the Ten Governors, sold and delivered last winter, five hundred corpses to the body snatchers, and has sold about the same number for several winters past, for which he and others received $17 for each corpse, forming an aggregate of $8,500 that was received each winter. The bodies are disinterred in the night, during the favorable tides, and carried from Potter’s Field to the Dead House, on the shore of Ward’s Island,—sometimes in a sleigh, and sometimes in a wheelbarrow,—and delivered to the body snatchers, awaiting their arrival at the Dead House. William O. Webb directs the grave diggers to give no corpses to the body snatchers, who died of small pox, or other contagious diseases, nor badly mutilated bodies. Michael Gilmore was an Assistant Grave Digger, and is now a clerk of the Superintendent of Potter’s Field. Wm. O. Webb’s salary is $800 per annum—a house free of rent—a farm—fuel, and provisions, from the Ten Governors—and four paupers and a servant to manage his farm. Sometimes he has fifteen paupers to work his farm. Webb’s clerk receives $400 a year, and his wife $200, and they have a large house and extensive grounds, and a servant and fuel and provisions from the Ten Governors. Webb employs a boy, about sixteen years old, who buries the dead, and who has $300 per annum. This boy receives the dead bodies, and selects such as the Doctors desire, immediately on their reception at Potter’s Field. Sometimes an arm or a leg is dissevered, and sold to the Doctors. After the bodies are removed, the coffins are sawed and chopped, and packed in bags, and taken to Harlem, and used as fire wood. The bodies are stripped of their dead clothes, and the best part sold in the city, as apparel, and the residue as rags, which constantly exposes the city to contagion. The Ten Governors are familiar with these facts, and have some knowledge of what is done with the money that is received for the dead bodies. William O. Webb has long been the warm personal and political friend of Governor Daniel F. Tiemann, whose mutual relations have been of such a peculiar nature that, although Gov. Tiemann has often been apprised of Webb’s monstrous proceedings, yet he dared not advance a step towards his removal. Webb’s expenses as Superintendent of Potter’s Field are $5,000 per annum. A respectable man, with the best security, proposed to Mayor Tiemann, when he was Governor, to assume the management of Potter’s Field, for $1,000 per annum, without the salaries, houses, farms, paupers, and servants, fuel, and provisions that the Superintendent and Clerk, and their wives then and now receive, forming an aggregate of $5,000 per annum, exclusive of the $8,500 received by the Superintendent and others for dead bodies. And yet, such were the peculiar relations subsisting between Gov. Tiemann and Mr. Webb, that the former dared not accept a proposition so favorable to the Treasury of the City, for whose economical disbursements Gov. Tiemann professes such anxious regard. One of the grave diggers refused to sell the body snatchers any more bodies, and informed Gov. Tiemann of his determination, who exclaimed, with much levity: “If you interfere with their business, there will be no inquest held over your body.” Webb sold the corpse of his wife’s uncle, whose name was Brown, a builder, and when Brown’s relatives desired his body for respectable interment, Webb placed another corpse in the coffin, and sent it to them, which they interred as their dear relative. The Lime Kiln Man was borne to Potter’s Field, and when his friends heard the sad intelligence of his death and pauper interment, they raised funds, which they gave to Webb, with directions to exhume and respectably inter him. But Webb could not find the Lime Kiln Man, and placed another corpse in a coffin, and buried it, and when the friends of the Lime Kiln Man came to Potter’s Field, Mr. Webb led them to a grave, which he assured them was the Lime Kiln Man’s. At my trial, on the first Monday in August, I shall summon the Doctor, and the body snatchers connected with him, and the superintendent, clerk, grave diggers, and all others engaged in this awful sacrilege, to unmask the scoundrels connected with our public institutions.
Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond.
New York is the seat of Commerce, affluence, intelligence, and journalism, and the devil has placed at the head of the Press, three such rogues as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond. I have personally known these desperate jugglers for twenty years, and if the reader is sceptical, when I brand them as unparalleled scoundrels, let him refer to the files of these editors, who fiercely denounce, and clearly prove each other to be incomparable villains, and in parallel columns, they assume to be the censors of the public morals, and anathematise rogues of every grade and country, whom they strive to allure to the embraces of the sacred virtues. The mighty destinies of our country are in the grasp of heartless black mail editors, and Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond never unite in matters of public good, nor in the election of meritorious citizens to public office. And when they scream loudest for the propagation of the public virtues, and the creation of wise public measures, their eyes are fastened on the devil, and his imps, and overshadowing schemes of public plunder. Their opinions have not half the force and purity of the humblest citizens, and yet, like foreign despots, they thrust their heresies into our skulls, and in connection with officials, as infamous as themselves, (whom they elect,) they trample our most sacred rights, and slyly appropriate the public treasure, and violate all laws, human and divine, and from whose editorial edicts there is no appeal. And thus the public evils of our country flow from such polluted sources, as the Herald, Times, and Tribune. If these three editors were as pure and patriotic as they profess to be, they would unite in the advocation of honest men for office, and discharge their thievish correspondents at Albany and Washington, (who are in collusion with official robbers, by direction of their employers,) and invariably oppose the election of vicious men to office. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond, and other editorial rogues, never advocate the election of a man to office, without the pledge of a share of his influence and spoils, which is the real source of our public evils. They black mail on a scale of startling magnitude and boldness. They watch, with ceaseless vigilance, for facilities to seize the pap from the private and public purse. They level their fleetest and most envenomed arrows at the subordinate municipal officers, Mayors, Governors, National Collectors, Representatives, Senators, Cabinet officers, and the President, himself, whom they force to yield to their demands, or they spread terror into the camps of these public vultures. Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond have obtained their prodigious power, through the large number of fools that read their nonsense, and black mail philippics. If these idiots would cease to read their vile and selfish stuff, and patronise those editors who proclaim the truth, and strive to promote the public welfare, such men as Bennett, Greeley, and Raymond would soon become the paupers and loafers and scamps of twenty years ago, when they had no place to lay their wicked skulls, nor credit for a loaf of bread.
The Peter Cooper Institute!
In front of this sham Institute is painted, in blazing letters: “These Stores, and the Story above to Let. Enquire in office, 2d story.” And Peter might have advertised a portion of the stories above the two lower stories, as he has rooms to let in every story of the building. Even around the lecture room, in the second and third stories, he has constructed small rooms to let to any adventurer who comes along. Such was his avarice, and so greedy was he to gouge all the area he possibly could from earth and Heaven, that he dug as far towards China as he dared, and approached Heaven’s dome, until his architect warned him to stop, lest the whole edifice tumble into one common ruin, so feeble was the building’s foundation. And now, Peter Cooper! I demand you to instantly surrender your right and that of your heirs, (including Mayor Tiemann and Edward Cooper,) to the building known as the Cooper Institute. You have made a great noise, for half a dozen years, about your extraordinary philanthropy, and you have publicly proclaimed, a thousand times, that you intended to give your “Art and Science” edifice to the city, entirely for educational purposes. And you have got its tax of $8,000 reduced with this plea. And you have also got the Croton water tax removed, although you have got a steam engine in the building. And yet you still hold the property, in the name of yourself and heirs, and from what I know of your penurious propensities, I could almost swear that you never meant to give it to the city. Was not the building publicly dedicated long since? And where are the three thousand pupils, with green satchels, with whom we all expected to see the building teem? There is more cheerfulness and utility in the deserts of Arabia, and the classic ruins and crumbling desolations of the Ancient States, than in the dismal and Shylock echoes of your bogus and uncomely structure. And why do you still clutch it to your heart, like an expiring miser, his miserable dross? And why did you so construct the building, as to render it utterly inappropriate for students? You have told beggars, high and low, for half a dozen years, that you could not give them a crum of bread, because you were devoting all your surplus means to the construction of the Cooper Institute. And now that it is erected, and you have got all you desired, (and have toiled thirty years to achieve,) in the election of Tiemann, your son-in-law, as Mayor, through your specious and fallacious Philanthropy, and in the appointment of Edward Cooper, your own son, as Street Commissioner, by Tiemann,—after you have reached the goal of your miserly and ungodly ambition, and have got all New York in your breeches pocket, I find you apply your fingers to your infernal nose, and hurl defiance at the people, whom you have bamboozled, and evince a disposition to forever hold the building over which you have raised such a clatter for half a dozen years, and now actually advertise the stores and rooms of nearly the entire edifice, and of course, will put the rents in your yawning pockets, in the name of the President and Board of Trustees of the immortal Cooper Institute, which illustrious Chartered Body only comprises Peter Cooper! O Peter! Peter! you are a consummate impostor, and all the people will soon conceive you to be so, unless you instantly disgorge the property you long promised to give them for educational purposes. And now, Peter, go to the City Hall at once, and record the Institute in the name of the people, who will ever bless you for your noble philanthropy.
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