The Shadle Autopsy Mystery
After the death of an asylum accountant, a doctor travels from Ohio to investigate suspicious causes.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Tacoma, May 5.—The asylum officials report that Dr. Bennett, who came here from Wauseon, Ohio, to inquire into the death of Asylum Accountant J. D. Shadle, was satisfied that he died from natural causes. At the time Shadle's body was sent to an autopsy at the home of his parents in Ohio, Dr. Bennett had filed an affidavit that he did not die of paralysis as stated in the death certificate issued by Coroner Hicks. An investigation is being made to satisfy the parents of the late Mr. Shadle. Dr. Bennett has no statement to make at present.
“Dr. Bennett had filed an affidavit that he did not die of paralysis as stated in the death certificate issued by Coroner Hicks.”
Medical skepticism and family grief collide in this 1894 investigation. Today, the transparency of medical reporting and death certificates is a standard civil right, yet the anxiety of families seeking truth from institutional bureaucracies remains a hauntingly familiar feature of public life.
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