- This video is brought to
you by The Great Courses Plus. Thanks to the sponsorship,
we're going to make a donation to the Henrietta Duterte Scholarship. This story has it all. Botched embalming? Yes. Missing corpse? Absolutely. Pagan rituals? You bet. It's the history of American
cremation and folks, it's wild. (fire crackles)
(ominous music) Sometimes I wonder,
when a person clicks on one of my videos for the first time, are they thinking, is that just her voice? It's wild. Are we gonna get a full
video of this person? No, I actually have a very deep voice. It's part of my thing. I'm like the Theranos lady. Today, we have a story that's
one of my absolute favorites, so good, I can't believe
we've never covered it. Our star, our body, dare
I say our iconic corpse, is the man The New York
Tribune described as principally famous as a corpse. I want that to be said about me so badly. He is the Baron Joseph
Henry Louis Charles de Palm, or the Baron de Palm, America's
first modern cremation. I say modern cremation because, of course, there were Native Americans
that cremated on open air pyres, but the Baron de Palm was
the first to be cremated in a standalone brick building in an attempt at a
reusable cremation machine, what we think about today when we picture a Western cremation. Before we make the full
introduction to the Baron, we need to talk about early attitudes toward cremation in America. Your average American in the late 1800s was not keen on the idea
of burning their dead. They associated cremation with hell and thought it was something
those heathens in the East did with their dead. But there was a group that
saw things very differently, and saw cremation as our
salvation, a way to purify America. Many members of this group were followers of a proto-New Age religion
that combined East and West, religion and science,
and some fire worship. We'll get back to that later. But the biggest influence
on the rise of cremation was the mid-19th century
Sanitarian Movement. These are the folks who saw
burial as dirty and gross, like bodies in the dirt and nasty fumes coming out of the graves, and everyone gets sick and like, ew. This was before the scientific
breakthrough of germ theory, spoiler, the correct theory, was widely accepted and understood. Sanitarians believed
disease and airborne illness was caused and spread by miasma, and that anything
rotting, from dirty homes to trash piles to
slaughterhouses to graveyards, was emitting these noxious
miasma fumes and gas into the air and infecting people. To be fair, the Sanitarian Movement brought us a lot of good things, like the board of health in major cities and more effective means to control the spread of diseases like cholera. But there were also many things that early Sanitarians got wrong, and a lot of those things
had to do with corpses and the poor and immigrants. Cleanliness is next to godliness, is next to classism, is
next to racism, is next to. In urban places like New York City, people just wouldn't stop dying and cemeteries kept filling
up with dead bodies. And according to the Sanitarians, those buried rotting corpses were releasing all the miasmas, and that's why people were getting sick. It's not why people were getting sick. They acquainted choosing
burial with murder. There were various ideas
on how to fix this. One was the rural cemetery movement. Put those diseasey
corpses outside the city. Some preferred burial at sea. Others were all for
airtight tombs or caskets. One proposition was
turn the bodies to stone and then pulverize them into a powder. But soon, one idea rose
above the rest: cremation. To a certain type of well-to-do,
educated white American, cremation was the path to true sanitation, people like this man, the
Reverend Octavius B. Frothingham. This guy was a prominent cremationist, but there's no real reason
to bring him into this story, except for the fact that the man's name was the Reverend Octavius B. Frothingham. You've already met Baron Joseph
Henry Louis Charles de Palm. These sound like very
poorly made-up characters. They are not, they are real. American cremation, baby. They were all psyched to
save the disgusting world from its rotting corpses, but
there was just one problem. No American had ever been cremated, at least no one like them. Enter the Baron de Palm. Now, the Baron is the one famous for actually getting cremated, but there was a whole cast of characters responsible for getting him to the flames. The main two you should know, that's four, the main two you should know
were Dr. Francis LeMoyne and Colonel Henry Alcott. Dr. LeMoyne was a retired physician and an eccentric, outspoken abolitionist. He had been expelled from
the Presbyterian Church for his radical ideas, and
was described by an enemy as a filthy old man in bad clothes. To be fair. he probably
was a little filthy, because Dr. LeMoyne
believed God never intended for the human body to come
in contact with water. Fire, though, is presumably gonna be okay. It's a cremation story. Dr. LeMoyne was all for cremation as a way to elevate the
masses and reform society. Plus, he had the means with which to build the first crematory. LeMoyne's eventual
partner in this cremation was Colonel Henry Alcott,
a progressive-minded lawyer and member of the New
York Cremation Society. Alcott was troubled by a vampire problem. No more burial, no more vampires. Choose cremation for
a vampire-free future. So we got one guy who doesn't believe in human contact with water and another guy who's
trying to prevent vampires. This is going well. More importantly, Alcott
was the co-founder of the Theosophical Society, of which he eventually
became the president. Described as a potent blend of Eastern and Western mysticism, theosophy influenced
countless New Age movements and Scientology's L. Ron Hubbard. Theosophists made for passionate
pro-cremation advocates. It was a harder sell to the public, where both religious
folks and atheists alike shared a distaste for
the optics of cremation. Likened to a barbecue
or a violent roasting, those who were anti-cremation pointed to submitting the remains of
the dear departed relatives to the sizzling process. Where was the dignity in this? Where was the time-honored ritual? People weren't exactly breaking
down Colonel Alcott's door to be cremated, all except Baron Joseph
Henry Louis Charles de Palm. Baron de Palm was an Austrian immigrant who joined the Theosophical
Society in 1875. de Palm was depicted as a man with land and castles and riches to his name, but he was actually quite
destitute and alone. Nonetheless, he believed in
the Theosophical Society, and he believed in cremation, mainly because he was terrified of burial, as allegedly, he had known someone who had been buried alive. De Palm made Alcott the
executor of his will and instructed him, upon his death, to give him a big old Theosophist funeral, and then cremate him. And when the Baron de Palm
died on May 20th, 1876, Alcott got to work to do just that. The plan was to have a big
debut for this new way of death, a Theosophical Society funeral
followed by a cremation handled by the New York Cremation Society. On May 28th, the Theosophical Society held de Palm's funeral,
attended by over 2000 people at the Masonic Temple in New York. Who ran the congregation
at the Masonic Temple? (clock ticks) The Reverend Octavius B. Frothingham, ah? Octavius, we love him. Called a pagan funeral by the press, crowds curious about the
society and de Palm's body pressed police to let them in to the already beyond capacity temple. Picture the scene. You have de Palm's coffin
decorated with mystic symbols and encircled by seven candles, symbolizing the seven planets. The theosophists waved palm leaves to keep evil spirits away. Colonel Alcott presided over
the ceremony as high priest. Incense was burning as a symbol
of the cremation to come. There was chanting. There were seven men in hooded robes. There was a man screaming about the devil. This funeral has everything. - Ghosts, ghouls, goblins, my son. (audience laughs) - And the Theosophists may
have loved this funeral, but the press were like- - Boo! - Reviewers had this to
say about the funeral. What's it like to have
reviewers at a funeral? I don't usually go to funerals, but it was my girlfriend's birthday and we wanted something nice and heard good things about funerals. It was anything but nice. Boring corpse, ugly flowers, two stars. Reviewers called the funeral another exemplification of the
wickedness of the metropolis, and the Theosophical Society was mocked as a circus of absurdity. Said the New York Tribune, "It
was a hodgepodge of notions, a mixture of guesswork and jugglery, of elixirs and pentagons,
of charms and conjurations." That sounds fun to me. I don't know about you. Now, Colonel Alcott was like,
all press is good press. My haters make me famous. But the New York Cremation Society got freaked out by the bad press and refused to cremate
the body of Baron de Palm, and slinked into the
shadows until the 1880s. So Alcott was stuck with the corpse and no way to cremate it. Oh, hello there. Don't mind me. It's just the videos
like this make me yearn for simpler times, when
people slowed down, appreciated the home,
and weren't so caught up in things like followers
or life expectancy. I'm churning butter, by the way. That should be obvious. That's why I'm so happy that The Great Courses
Plus sponsored this video. Why, with The Great Courses Plus, I was able to learn in my
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allowed us to make a donation. I'll see y'all later. While the search for a
crematory got underway, there was still the matter of what to do with Baron de Palm's corpse. August Buckhorst, an undertaker at New York's Roosevelt Hospital, as well as the undertaker
for the Theosophical Society, took charge of de Palm's embalming needs. Initially, de Palm's body
was injected with arsenic, common at the time, but
it soon became apparent that while the crematory
search slogged on, de Palm's body needed
more heavy duty fixings to preserve him for the long haul. Buckhorst, a big, burly, red-faced German had a real (speaks foreign language) for his calling as an
undertaker and embalmer. Of course, this was the Wild West of embalming in New York City, so Buckhorst was still pretty
much left to his own devices as to how de Palm's
body would be preserved. First, Buckhorst took
out de Palm's organs, and then he proceeded to
pack the body cavities with a special concoction of potter's clay and crystallized carbolic acid, which he also rubbed
all over de Palm's skin. The body was placed into a coffin and put into a receiving
vault at a Lutheran cemetery in Williamsburg to await cremation. Yeah, de Palm and waited
at a receiving vault in a cemetery in Williamsburg
before it was cool. While de Palm's corpse awaited its fate, Alcott was desperately trying to hold up his end of the bargain. Months went by, and no options for cremation
presented themselves, until one day, reading the newspaper, Alcott came across a fellow by the name of Dr. Francis
LeMoyne, remember him, who was building a crematory
in Washington, Pennsylvania. LeMoyne had originally
wanted to build the crematory at a local cemetery, but the people in the town
refused to give permission, so instead, he turned to the grassy knoll on his own property,
known as Gallows Hill, because it had once
been used for hangings. The old days. LeMoyne had started
construction in May of 1876, with the intention that this crematory would be for his future corpse. It was a small building that
looked like a school house, and it had a reception
room with some furniture, a place for the body, and a columbarium. The other room housed a coke-fired
clay retort and furnace. Coke-fired, coke like
the by-product of coal that burns hotter, not cocaine. The cremation was wild, but not that wild. Windows on the outside of the building allowed people to peek in and
see the cremation in process. Of course, the anti-cremation press was critical of the
aesthetics of the crematory, calling it cheap and an
architectural disaster. - Boo! Boo! - Colonel Alcott himself
said it was very plain, repulsively so, as
unaesthetic as a bake oven. I mean, it was America's
very first DIY crematory, cut the guy some slack. He doesn't believe in water. But despite it being this
trash cremation shack, Colonel Alcott had, after
months of searching, finally found a place to cremate de Palm, and by God, he was going
to cremate de Palm. Using his background as a lawyer, as well as his social connections, Alcott procured all the permits and the legal requirements
for the crematory, and before long, LeMoyne's
crematory was ready for its first body. The cremation of Baron de Palm was set for the first week of December. Now to check on the body. In November, the embalmer, Buckhorst, opened de Palm's coffin to make sure he was still in a preserved state. While an accompanying reporter, because there's reporters at all of this, called de Palm a ghastly sight, the embalming job wasn't
entirely unsuccessful. De Palm's skin was
shrunken and discolored, but you could still tell it was him, and there was no bad smell. A win. On December 4th, de Palm, in his coffin, was loaded on the train to be taken to the
crematory in Pennsylvania. A whole bunch of people from
the Theosophical Society and a group of doctors,
lawyers, journalists, and health officials
traveled on the same train as de Palm's body. Alcott is there. He's networking, he's charming, he's entertaining, and he's converting all the people on the train to cremation. Two women were especially interested, and Alcott went on to say
that he believed women would be the most zealous
members of the Cremation Movement due to the fact that cremation
would preserve their beauty, while burial would set upon
them the ugly ravages of decay. Easy, breezy, beautiful cremated girl. (romantic music) All was going just dandy until the train arrived in Pittsburgh and de Palm's body was
found to be missing. Oopsie poopsie! How can we have a
cremation without a corpse? That's Buckhorst stating the obvious as the train workers scoured
the train for the missing body. The fear was that de Palm
had been corpse-napped by pro-burial fanatics,
but nothing so interesting. They had just lost the body in the baggage cart for
awhile or something. You know, it's fine. They found it. Arriving in Washington,
Pennsylvania, on December 5th, the body was taken via
a woefully shabby hearse to LeMoyne's property. Upon arriving at the
crematory reception room, it was surrounded by a mix of gawkers, officials, and journalists. Alcott opened de Palm's
coffin that afternoon to check on the old man. Remember that, in November, Buckhorst's embalming job
wasn't entirely unsuccessful. It now appeared in December that it was, in fact, quite unsuccessful. A reporter from The New York World said that no spectacle more horrible was ever shown to mortal eyes. - Boo! - These reporters are a lot. They are ice cold. To be fair, de Palm's
body had raisined down from 175 pounds to 92 pounds, and there was little more
than a shriveled torso and a grinning skull. Alcott quickly closed the coffin and later had the body privately slathered in herbs and spices,
shrouded in white linen, and placed into an iron
cradle for the cremation. Buckhorst, the embalmer,
probably got his hands in there, too, for some touch-ups,
because the next day, it was noted that de Palm
had plumped up a little bit. Didn't look quite as shriveled. At two a.m. on December 6th, the furnace was lit in order to get it to the prescribed 2300 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1,260 degrees Celsius. By around eight a.m.,
witnesses, local thrill seekers, and all the folks from the train all tried to squeeze in to
get a glimpse of de Palm going into the retort. Alcott, again, acted as high priest. At 8:30a.m., Baron de Palm's body was placed into the retort head-first. There was a sizzling sound before the door was cemented shut, and the gathering was, at first, quote, "Repelled by the smell of burning flesh." However, the smell of
the spices soon took over and witnesses focused on other things, like when the corpse, supposedly due to involuntary
muscle contractions, raised its hand and three fingers skyward. Hi. By 11:12 a.m., the board of health declared Baron de Palm's
body fully incinerated. And with that, the first crematory
in the Western hemisphere cremated its first body. The total cost of de Palm's
cremation came to $7.04. The cremated remains of de Palm were sprinkled with perfume by Alcott and gathered up in a Hindu-style urn, I'm not sure what that means,
to be taken back to New York. Well, most of the cremated remains. Some of the witnesses took some ash for their fun-time collections, and Dr. LeMoyne took some bone fragments to keep in a bottle in his office. Once back in New York City, the majority of the remains were kept at the Theosophical
Society headquarters until Alcott scattered
them in New York Harbor before taking off to India, where he himself was eventually cremated. Good for him. There was an interview that Alcott gave with The New York World in 1877, where he produced a snuff box supposedly filled with a small
portion of de Palm's ashes. When the reporter asked if other members of the Theosophical Society
carried de Palm's ashes around in snuff boxes, he dismissed the idea, saying, "Some of them keep them in lockets that hang from their watch chains." Alcott also mentioned that
he thought cremated remains would make an excellent tooth
powder for cleaning teeth, but given his proclivity
to troll the press, it's hard to say if he was serious. The LeMoyne Crematory went
on to cremate 42 more bodies, including LeMoyne himself in 1879. His ashes are buried at a grave just outside where the
crematory building still stands. Oh, not such a shabby shack
of a crematory, is it? Still standing almost 150 years later. And that, deathlings, is the
nothing is ever simple story of the cremation of the Baron Joseph Henry
Louis Charles de Palm. And now, over 50% of
Americans are cremated. He's a pioneer. It's not a bad track record for someone principally
famous as a corpse. So badly. Thank you to The Great Courses Plus for sponsoring this video. Here's where our donation
is going this month. Back in June, I announced I
would be funding a scholarship for black female mortuary students, and I'm still doing that. But so many of you said
that you also want to donate or help with this, so now
there is a second scholarship to be funded by the
Order of the Good Death and our supporters. The Order has partnered with the Community College
of Baltimore County to create a scholarship in
honor of Henrietta Duterte, the first female funeral home
owner in the United States. There's a link below to donate, and the money goes directly
to an endowment fund at the college. If we raise enough, the
scholarship is forever, folks, every year going forward. The Order has also commissioned
four pieces about race and the death industry
that will be coming out over the next month on our website. Following our Twitter and Instagram is the best way to be aware
of when those come out. This video was made
with generous donations from death enthusiasts just like you. (spooky music) The Reverend Octavius B. Frothingham. Are those people gonna stay outside? I hope they're not here
for Sunday fun day. That's not what I'm
doing here, I'm working. The Reverend Octavious B. Frothingham. Ah? Theosophical, theosophical, theo-sophie. A whole bunch of theosophists,
the-os, theosophists. It's all right, I'm coming back. I'ma kill it this time. And the theosophists may, the Theosophical Society, theosophists. And the theo-tho-fifth, theo-tho-fifth loved the funeral. Hold on. Unfortunately, the chicken cannot stay. I really can't stay. Baby, it's cluck outside. Let's see if I can deliver
it better, shall we? Let's not be terrible at our jobs. Whoopsie poopsie. Whoopsie poopsie. Whoopsie poopsie. So, what ya, what ya, what ya want? Don't you tell me to stop. You'll stick around and
make it worth your while. As to how de Palm's body would pre, byuh. The time of day when I just get so hot, and the chicken just left and it's like, what is there to live for? Boo! Ah? Hey.
