The Chilling Story of One-Eyed Joe and Body-Snatching in the Late 1800s
‘They dig up corpses and sold them to medical schools’
John Frankford, more commonly known as One-Eyed Joe, was a famous horse thief. Throughout the mid and late 80s, he traveled from Ohio to Maryland, narrowly escaping the law as he stole and sold horses. In 1895, he was imprisoned in Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, where he became one of the victims of Dr. John Bacon, the prison doctor. Dr. Bacon dissected Frankford’s body and removed his brain. Frankford’s case was one of the several cases involving an underground cadaver network of body-snatching that was responsible for supplying medical schools all across Pennsylvania.
Put Behind Bars
When Frankford was finally caught by the authorities and put behind the bars in the Lancaster county jail, he would routinely escape and developed a reputation as an excellent escape artist. Eventually, they constructed a special cell to contain him, but he managed to cut through even that. He was spotted and shot in the face; he survived, but lost an eye, which earned him the nickname “One-Eyed Joe.”
In 1885, Frankford was sent to the Eastern State Penitentiary, where he spent 19 years; he was well-liked and lived a relatively calm and quiet life there…
