In today's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Jim Stingl addresses an issue reported in the paper about ten days ago. At the time the story was first reported, it really bothered me. It still does.
Skeletal remains of about 1,600 people unearthed from paupers' cemeteries on the Milwaukee County Grounds during the early 1990s represent a "unique and remarkable" opportunity for research and will be kept for academic study rather than reburied, the Wisconsin Historical Society has decided.
Members of another historical group criticized the decision, including one who called it "morally disappointing" and said the group may challenge the decision so the remains can be reburied in a public ceremony.
The remains, most of which were buried in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, were discovered in 1991 during construction of an addition to Froedtert Hospital in Wauwatosa. An archaeological excavation recovered remains, personal effects and funeral hardware, such as nails and coffin fragments, from 1,649 burial sites.
The remains have since been temporarily stored and studied at Marquette University. But the state's historical society - which is responsible for the administration of Wisconsin's burial preservation laws - was petitioned this year by Marquette, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Wauwatosa Historical Society to make a final decision. The remains are to be transferred from Marquette to UWM within 60 days.
I argued that the remains should be reburied.
Stingl takes the same position.
He writes:
Milwaukee's paupers of old did not ask to have their graves disturbed. The question now is whether they would want them restored.
Or would they be OK with their skeletons in boxes on the shelf at a university, available to be probed and cataloged into perpetuity?
...We'll never know the outcome preferred by these people, many who died poor, insane, abandoned and anonymous.
So I tried the next best thing and asked homeless men at The Guest House, an emergency shelter on N. 13th St. Which would they prefer?
"That could be me," said Kenny DuPree, 50. "I wouldn't want nobody to move my body. I lived here, and I died here. I think I deserve that spot of history.
"They should definitely be put back in a proper grave. I care even if I'm just a bone."
..."They're human beings. They're something Christ created," Phillip Cosey, 47, said. "When you die, you should be properly buried - homeless or not homeless."
It's not right to keep them on a shelf, he said. "Let these people rest in peace."
I agree with Cosey and DuPree. Time's up, university researchers. Let's return these folks to their eternal rest, already in progress.
It's clear what you scientists get out of this project, but what's in it for the dearly departed? They were powerless in life, and their status as nobodies is why you're able to hold onto them now.
That's my take.
These people were the dregs of society -- unwanted or unknown or unclaimed. Of course, it's easy for scientists to say that they should be used for research purposes even though these individuals never granted permission for their bones to be used that way. There aren't ancestors to step in and prevent the scientists from exploiting the remains.
Would it be acceptable to dig up an intact cemetery with marked graves and harvest subjects for research?
Why should it be OK to disturb paupers' cemeteries and confiscate the remains?
The deceased paupers should be treated with no less dignity than anyone else.
We should show respect for these lives that were lived. Though buried in paupers' cemeteries, they were no less precious and no less valuable.
Human remains aren't raw material. Scientists aren't entitled to do as they wish with them.
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