A real-life mishap of the misidentification of a body from the Logansport State Hospital in 1942 was shared by Kewanna Historian and retired teacher Terry Engle earlier this year.
The story had been first posted in the Logansport Pharos Reporter. Eight decades later, the odd occurance still stands out to WROI Giant fm news reporter Shelby Lopez.
It was October 3, 1942, a Saturday, when James Wilson asked his neighbor to call and report the death of his wife to the Harrison Funeral Home in Kewanna. It was reported that Emma Wilson had passed away at the Logansport State Hospital, then known as Longcliff.
Paul Harrison, employee of Harrion Funeral Home, along with another Harrison Funeral Home staff member, drove to Longcliff in Logansport to collect the body. Once there, the pair first obtained Wilson's death certificate. As the two men from Harrison Funeral Home were preparing to remove the body, they had noticed that it was the body of a man, instead of Emma Wilson.
A hospital attendant soon 'corrected' the mistake, locating the body of a woman, which had an identification envelope and tags for Emma Wilson. The body was quickly removed to Kewanna, where preparations for burial were started.
The bereaved husband, James Wilson, called Harrison Funeral home, requesting to see the body. Wilson was asked to wait until the following day, since preparation of his wife's body had not yet been complete.
When Emma's sister had arrived at the funeral parlor the following day to view the body, she was surprised to find a stranger instead of Emma.
"That's not my sister," the woman exclaimed, "my sister has brown hair and is plump!"
Moments later, her husband James arrived and confirmed that a mistake had indeed been made when identifying his wife's body. Wilson and staff from the funeral parlor soon began the task of telephoning friends, relatives, and local newspaper offices to report the error that had been made. It was reported that apparently all the necessary calls had been made, as no one had showed for the funeral, despite notices being posted in Rochester and Logansport newspapers.
It was later learned that three different Emma Wilson's had been patients at the mental hospital at that time. The body in the Kewanna funeral parol had actually been that of eighty-year-old Emma Wilson of South Whitley, who had been a patient at Longcliff for fifty years prior.
It was reported officials at Longcliff had been embarrassed by the error, but assumed full responsibility for any and all resulting obligations. Soon after, new attendants had been employed at the hospital, most likely due to the serious errors made that day.
(Photo above obtained by findagrave.com.)
Emma Wilson would later pass away January 8, 1961, at the age of 68, still a resident at the Logansport State Hospital.
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