The New York Times, SUNDAY, MAY 31, 1914. PAGE NUMBER 50
PAINE’S LONG LOST REMAINS HOME BY PARCEL POST
After Century of Wandering, What Little Is Left of the Great Patriot Is Recaptured to Rest on the Soil He Helped Make Free—Strange Story of 100 Years of Theft and Desecration, Mystery and Fraud.
By William M. van der Weyde, President of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association.
PARCEL POST brought to New York from overseas a few days ago a small wooden box such as is commonly used by business houses for the transmission of samples. A label on its cover bore the words: “Of no commercial value.” The declaration was indeed true, for the box contained nothing of any intrinsic worth whatever. But so precious are the contents of this little wooden box to every patriotic American that its value is incalculable.
In the tiny case were two small envelopes, each containing hair, and there was also the wax cast of a human face.
Ironical indeed, calling to mind his own oft-quoted phrase that it is but one step from the sublime to the ridiculous—is the return to American soil, determined, by parcel post, of the last fragment that is known to be in existence of the stolen body of Thomas Paine, patriot, statesman, philosopher; author of those epoch-making works, “Common Sense,” “The Crisis,” “Rights of Man,” and “The Age of Reason.”
Two locks of the great patriot’s hair were in the little wooden box. There was also a wax cast made of Paine’s face three years after his body was taken to England—thirteen years after his death.
The return of this last vestige of the mortal remains, a reminder to the “United States of America” (a name suggested and first used by Thomas Paine to designate the Republic that he created and contributed in largest to found) terminates not only the remarkable travels of Paine’s body and later the fragments of that body most interesting to a most widely published chapter of history covering a period of a century.
He Died in 1809.
Thomas Paine died in New York June 8, 1809, in a little frame house that stood on the site of the present 59 Grove Street—Greenwich Village—then described as “Greenwich, two miles from New York.” He was buried, as provided in his will, in a plot 12 feet square on his farm, a farm presented to him in 1784 by the State of New York “in consideration of eminent services rendered to the United States in the progress of the late war, and as a testimony of the great sense this people of the State entertains of his distinguished merit, character, and conduct.” (Seventh Session, 1784, Chap. 64, Section XXXL)
Shortly before Paine’s death, William Cobbett, the famous English agitator, conceived the bold idea of interring the body of the great author, and hoped that by so doing in England he might awaken there an interest in Paine’s revolutionary writings, and that it would lead to a popular revolution.
In a public letter that Cobbett wrote from America, September, 1819, to Lord Folkstone in England, he says:
“While such a fellow as Jamesond [sic] is suffered to strut about, Paine, though dead, ought not to sleep. There is a little hole under the grave and a little monument over it, and there it is. I think the monument should be rather more mighty. His fame is spreading most rapidly in England and the present will show that they value him there a great deal more than they do here; an I flatter myself that of serving Paine’s memory will show that I think it ought to be much the greatest man that ever lived on the American continent, whilst alive, to be buried like a calf, and that they were the first thing to my mind, when a monument ought to be made something of.”
Before the close of that same month (September, 1819) Cobbett dug up the body and started off to England with it. The next volume of Cobbett’s Register (XXXV., page 382) contained a report of the exhumation.
Cobbett wrote:
“I have not done here a thing which I have already done, a cause here varied through Britain. The bones of Thomas Paine! But wait a while, let me first tell you what I found. But I found him in England. ‘It is a corps of honor now. I saw in the public notice, and I found him in a house in London, and I found him in one of them. I made a journey from New York in the middle of the night to find his body; and I found it, starting with its strange freight. The Horseman says: we have his bones, letters and household goods and the large wooden box that inclosed the remains of Paine’s body, which shipped Nov. 29. A Liverpool newspaper reported Cobbett’s arrival in these words:
Arrival of Cobbett and Tom Paine’s Bones.—Mr. Cobbett arrived in London the last, on board of which was the following passenger: “Mr. W. Cobbett, with the bones of Thomas Paine. We observed him to the inn, which is a distance of about three miles from the dock, from whence he was to start. As an associate of the Custom House officers, nothing further was done with the box which contained the precious contents.” “The bones of Paine were the subject of great interest and probably ridicule in England. The box was opened Cobbett observed the remains of Paine. The head was shown, and the coffin was pronounced. Cobbett proposed an enormous monument to Paine, “100 feet.” Cobbett was extremely attacked by the authorities, both in the press and in parliament.
Now commenced the travels of Paine’s bones through England—travels that resulted in the eventual disappearance of every part of the body save a tiny fragment of the brain and two locks of the hair.
Cobbett gave orders for the shipping of the bones to his home in Bull Court, Fleet Street, London. There they remained for some years, and it is likely that it was not disturbed until after Cobbett’s death.
In the meantime a report had been sent in from Liverpool that the body Cobbett took to England was not that of Paine at all. The Observer, a paper in London published this report, attributing the statement to East Grovenor. A little pamphlet published in London, with no name on it, cited this figures, and which he called “Cobbett’s Skeleton,” claimed that the body was that of a negro.
Cobbett replied to East Grosvenor as follows:
“Your Lordship has slandered all the skeletons that these bones are not the bones of Thomas Paine. Here, my Lord, I have the affidavit of witnesses, from which the coffin plate, which sets forth ‘Thomas Paine, aged 74,’ has been recently quoted in its presence.” (Register, XXXV, p. 392.)
“There were so many of these false stories then in circulation (that the bones were not those of Paine, but of a negro) Cobbett had made that same statement a wax cast of the face. The head was in a remarkably fine state of preservation; and it be considered that it was then thirteen years since Paine had died, the fact that the wax cast showed very plainly the European features, proved they were not those of a negro.”
The cast itself constituted the wax death-mask, and its exhibition seems to have been made originally from life story inspired by Earl Grosvenor.
To be Put in Museum.
This is the wax mask that has just come over here, together with Paine’s hair. The mask and hair will in a few days be added to the collection of the Thomas Paine National Museum at New Rochelle. The museum is located at the same farm house that Thomas Paine erected a short time before his death on the farm given him by the State of New York, the one-room mansion that originally stood on the property having been rebuilt on the same ground. Paine’s absence in Europe as a messenger of the French National Convention. The museum is under the direction of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association.
While the wax mask attracted considerable public attention when shown in London in 1832, Cobbett determined that the time was not propitious for carrying out his ideas of a revolution in England at that time. In 1833 Cobbett directed that the great box containing the bones be removed from his London home, 11 Bull Court, Fleet Street, to his country home, Normandy Farm, in Sussex.
The envelope in the shipping of the box and its weird contents to Cobbett’s Sussex home occurred the first step in the disintegration of the body. Benjamin Tilly, a secretary and close personal friend of Cobbett, abstracted from inside the skull a small part of the brain, and at the same time he took from the outside some of the hair.
Several years ago Moncure D. Conway, the eminent biographer of Paine and my predecessor as President of the Thomas Paine National Historical Association, who for years was working on the fragment of Paine’s brain, brought this relic back to America with him, presenting it to the association. In October, 1908, the little piece of that great brain that produced “Common Sense,” “Rights of Man,” and “Age of Reason” was restored with appropriate ceremonies to the locality from which Cobbett in 1819 had taken Paine’s body. With the fragment of brain, when it was reinterred under the Paine monument in New Rochelle, was a printed copy of Benjamin Tilly’s written account of the removal of brain and hair. It read as follows:
“Tuesday, Jan. 7, 1833 at 1 o’clock a’noon I went to 11 Bull Court, Fleet Street, and there with Mr. Gilbert and Mr. Tilly I saw the remains of Mr. Thomas Paine. (That some brought from America by Mr. C.) Johan: preserved some of his hair, and from his skull took a portion of his brain, which had become hard, was what is almost petrify. Benjamin Tilly’s certificate.”
Also Contained Hair.
The second of the two envelopes in the parcel post package also contained a lock of Paine’s hair; as well as this authentication on a pencil-ruled paper which showed its origin:
“Mr. Paine’s hair. Brought from Normandy Farm, 21st Jan. 1833, by Jesse Oldfield.”
This is also in Tilly’s handwriting. Jesse Oldfield was Cobbett’s stockman and publisher. He was given Paine’s hair following the sale of Cobbett’s effects and Mrs. Thomas Cobbett having died seven months previously.
Paine’s coffin and remaining bones were at Normandy Farm from the time of their removal from Bull Court, London, to a few months after Cobbett’s death. Several friends of Cobbett viewed the remains in that time.
On Oct. 27, 1850, James Paul Cobbett, son of William Cobbett, inscribed his name at the large boxes in several places on the skull in order to insure their identification in future years.
Dr. Moncure Conway, up to the time of his death in 1907, firmly believed that some day the skull, at least, would be found. “It is as likely as not,” he told me, “that Paine’s skull is in the office of some London physician—not as a Paine relic, but because doctors have human skulls for purposes of study. If the skull of Paine, or rather, if one that is alleged to be Paine’s, turns up it can readily be identified by the fact that it bears the name of Cobbett on it, and another word or two which I am keeping secret for the present.”
I had intended asking Dr. Conway when I next saw him to have a record made in writing, so that the “secret” marks on the skull would be known, but never again saw Dr. Conway. A few months after our conversation he died, quite suddenly, in Paris.
I have, recently, however, by the merest chance, in the course of my investigations tracing the remains of Paine, discovered what those marks are. I have made a record of it, which is reposing in the Paine Association’s archives.
In January, 1836, Cobbett’s effects were sold at auction at Normandy Farm. The box containing Paine’s bones was put up for sale, although Jesse Oldfield, Cobbett’s publisher, referring to it as witness, Thomas Piggott to offer it. After the sale, George Ward, Trustee of the Cobbett estate, took possession of the box. He held it for nine years.
At the end of that period, the receivership being over, he turned the box over to Tilly, who had been Cobbett’s amanuensis, and who was an ardent admirer of both Cobbett and Paine. In 1849, James Paul Cobbett shipped the box to 13 Bedford Square, East, London, Tilly’s address at that time.
The last record of the bones was in 1849 when, as alleged by a writer in Notes and Queries, Jan. 20, 1888, he “saw Paine’s bones in a box in the house of John Chennell, a corn merchant in Guildford.” The writer, who signed himself “A Native of Guildford,” went on to say that Chennell had told him the box containing Cobbett’s sale at Ash by someone who had bought the box without knowing its contents.
Chennell appears again in a letter to The Survey Times, published Jan. 5, 1909, in which he appeared to state that Chennell had Paine’s bones in a tin box in a parchment document, the parchment bearing the words, “The Bones of Paine.” There were, he said, “only a few bones inside the box,” he wrote. “The writer cannot the Chennell story so apparent. The box which Chennell bought was at Ash Farm, not at Ash. One writer tells of the box containing the bones mentions that they were in a porcelain jar.”
The story is not entirely impossible, however, but if Chennell had any of Paine’s bones, the bones he had would be at best only a few of the bones. The bones in 1849 were in Tilly’s keeping, or the major portion of them.
In 1854 the Rev. Robert Ainslie, Ainslie, Secretary of the London City Mission, told Edward Truelove, a London publisher of reputation, that he had in his possession the skull and right hand of Thomas Paine. Truelove tried to acquire them. His inquiries were availed.
Mrs. Robert Ainslie’s connection, daughter, Marguerite, first wife of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, has told of her remembrance of the bones in her father’s possession in her childhood. She said: “Thomas Paine’s bones were in our possession. I remember them as a child, but I believe they were lost in one of those moves which my father had some years ago. I can find no trace of them.”
He Bought the Skull.
The Rev. Robert Ainslie’s connection with the bones resulted, no doubt, from the fact that his brother, who was famous as a veterinary surgeon, had some affiliation with the estate of Lord King, at Ockham, not far from Cobbett’s home at Normandy Farm.
The son of Robert Ainslie, Oliver, a lawyer in London, informed Dr. Conway that his father had purchased the skull and right hand of Paine at a charitable auction held at St. Albans Place, near Oxford Street, London.
Benjamin Tilly, at about the time Ainslie made reference to, was winding up his affairs, and it is quite possible that Paine’s skull was sold by him with Paine’s bones to the auctioneer, through some Cobbett connection of himself, or one of his employees. Abstracted the skull and the right hand from the bones before he died and sold them to the clergyman. Certain it is that Tilly resulted in possibly the worst thought possible, the bones had been removed by Ward, the receiver of the Cobbett estate, and sold by him to Chennell.
At this point in the tracing of the remains there is necessarily much confusion.
About 1860 Tilly died at the home of a farmer named Green, at Bethnal Green. Tilly at the time of his death had in his possession his papers and memoirs, the skull and the right hand, a large porcelain jar containing the fragment of the brain, five locks of hair, numerous papers relating to tracing the locks and hair, several illuminated manuscripts by Cobbett, the wax cast of Paine’s face made in 1822 and numerous books and miscellaneous papers.
In 1860 the clergyman of St. Anns, Mrs. Ginn candidly mentioned to the writer that the late clergyman of the Baptist Church which the Glenns attended, the fact of Tilly’s death at the farmer’s and the strange articles that were found in the room at their place of death. Mr. Austin McReynolds was interested, and at once woke up and went and talked over with Ginn.
Mrs Ginn told the clergyman that in cleaning Tilly’s room after his death, she found a box containing a lot of bones, and that she had disposed of them to a rag-and-bone dealer for some petty sum. She also apprised Mr. Reynolds of the fact that they were human bones. The bones so disposed of in this way were preserved and shown to the clergyman.
Mr. Reynolds at once arranged for the preservation of the remains. The brain he resold to a London bookseller, and from him it was picked up by Dr. Conway. The Cobbett papers were afterwards be sold to the Cobbett family and to the British Museum.
Word reached me recently that Mr. Reynolds found that the Tilly papers, papers of authentication and the wax cast of the face. All were communicated with Mr. Reynolds and arranged for the purchase of the mask for the Paine National Museum at New Rochelle.
Did Not Credit Tale.
Regarding the story of Mrs. Ginn—that she did not known the skeleton in Tilly’s room to be those of Paine she told still it to a rag-and-bone dealer—Dr. Reynolds did not wholly discredit it. He believed Mrs. Ginn knew just what bones they were and had disposed of them more profitably.
Certain it is that all of the bones and the skull as well, have now disappeared. The Ginns are dead, as are all those persons who can shed light on what became of them, so that if any of the bones, or the skull, are still in existence (which is most unlikely) the persons who own them do not know they possess so precious a treasure.
Mr. Rev. Alexander Gordon of Manchester, England, some years ago, claimed to have heard of bones in 1813 and to have again heard of them in 1876, but he afforded little of the mystery about the matter, and declines to give any information. In response to my inquiries Mr. Gordon has written me to say: “Although I was pleased to believe that I knew something about the whereabouts of Paine, but I never confirmed that belief.”
Curiously, the various clergymen who are connected in a way with the posthumous travels of Paine’s bones. Benjamin Tilly himself was a Methodist, were originally all orthodox and all subsequently became Unitarians.
At the great Paine celebration, which will be held here as a monument in New Rochelle yesterday, was attended by a very prominent local clergyman, who spoke on “Religion of Thomas Paine.”
With the recovery of the two locks of Thomas Paine’s hair, which had been preserved by Cobbett’s secretary, Tilly, comes to a close the last chapter in the story of the travels of Paine’s remains, since that notable day when Cobbett abstracted the body and took it to England.