After 128 Years on Display, Mummy Finally Gets His Burial

A dead man whose body sat on display for 128 years in Pennsylvania has finally been laid to rest. James Murphy—better known as “Stoneman Willie” due to his hardened skin, the result of an experimental embalming technique—was buried Saturday in Reading under a black tombstone carrying both his names, per the Guardian. It was “the reverent, respectful thing to do,” said Kyle Blankenbiller, director of the Theo C. Auman funeral home, where the mummy has been on display since 1895. “He’s been gawked at enough.” An alleged pickpocket and alcoholic, Murphy had given police a false name to avoid shaming his wealthy Irish father. When he died of kidney failure in jail, no known relative could be found to claim the body.

It was then sent to the Theo C. Auman funeral home, where the undertaker experimented with a new embalming formula, per CBS News. He used so intense a concoction that Murphy was mummified. He was left “with leathery skin and a gaunt appearance, but with his hair and teeth intact,” per the Guardian. The body spent the next 128 years in an open casket in the funeral home, which received permission from the state to keep it so as to monitor signs of decomposition. There, “Stoneman Willie” became “the object of fascination for thousands, including countless curious locals, researchers and, in decades past, schoolchildren on class trips,” per CBS.

He attracted more crowds in recent days as the funeral home decided it was time to say goodbye. At Saturday’s funeral, Murphy’s true identity, discovered with help from local historians, was publicly revealed for the first time, per the Guardian. Murphy, who hailed from New York, was finally laid to rest in an 1890s tuxedo after his body was paraded through Reading in a motorcycle hearse. It was like saying goodbye to a friend, said Blankenbiller. “He has just become such an icon, such a storied part of not only Reading’s past, but certainly its present.” (Read more Pennsylvania stories.)