Stoneman Willie died in a Pa. jail in 1895, and has been on display at a funeral home ever since. That’s changing.
The 'Mummy of Reading' was a pickpocket who hid his identity to protect his wealthy family. He will finally be buried with a headstone - with his real name.
Not every funeral home has a mummy. And not every mummy has a name. But that has been the case in Reading, Pa., where for nearly 130 years the preserved remains of a pickpocket, who died in a city jail, and was accidentally mummified by a mortician, have been displayed at a local funeral parlor.
The people of Reading have remained on informal terms with the mummy in their midst. Generations of curiosity seekers and children, church groups, and Sunday school students, researchers and reporters who have peered into the coffin of this man turned to stone have only known him by a nickname: Stoneman Willie. The true identity of Stoneman Willie, arrested under a false name and whose relatives could never be found, has remained an intriguing and morbid mystery.
For many in Reading, for whom the public display of the wizened corpse of a drifter who died in the city’s custody has never given them pause, Stoneman Willie became something more than just the local mummy. He became a treasured, if macabre bit of local nostalgia.
“He is so endeared in the community,” said Kyle Blankenbiller, director of Theo C. Auman funeral home, where Stoneman Willie has lain in an open coffin since 1895. “He’s been a legend for so long.”
Soon, though, answers to at least some of the questions surrounding the mummy will come to light. As part of Reading’s weeklong 275th anniversary celebration next month, the city will give Stoneman Willie a proper and long overdue burial, one befitting a legend.
There will be a parade and a week of viewings, for which Stoneman Willie will wear a donated, period-appropriate suit. On Oct. 7, a New Orleans jazz band will lead Stoneman Willie’s glass-encased hearse down Penn Street to Forest Hills Memorial Park, where a minister will offer prayers. In the quiet of the cemetery, Stoneman Willie’s true name, identified by Blankenbiller and others after a review, will be revealed, inscribed on a polished stone of black granite.
“He’s our friend, and we want this to be very reverent and respectful,” said Blankenbiller, who is overseeing the funeral with city officials.
Organizers are not revealing Stoneman Willie’s name before the burial, said Blankenbiller. That’s not how Reading has ever known him.
“He’s always just been Willie,” he said.
Things didn’t go so well the last time the funeral home tried to bury Stoneman Willie. Local editorial pages screamed in the early 2000s when it was learned that the owners of the national funeral chain that had bought Auman’s were planning on burying Stoneman Willie on the sly. That was before Blankenbiller joined the funeral home. He wanted to do it right.
The timing of the anniversary seemed fitting, said Laura Reppert, city coordinator for the 275th anniversary. Reading, a former factory town now trying to reimagine and revitalize itself, is proud of its past, she said. For so long, Stoneman Willie has been part of that past.
“He’s just such a storied part of the history and heritage of Reading,” she said. “We thought it would be a beautiful thing to dignify him in this way, and to bury him with the pomp and circumstance that he would never have gotten in his real life.”
The funeral will mark an end to Stoneman Willie’s long journey to a place of rest finally free of prying eyes. In life, Stoneman Willie did not want anyone in Reading to know his real name.
An itinerant petty thief and alcoholic, he came to Reading by train from Philadelphia in October of 1895 to pick pockets at the State Firemen’s Convention, said Blankenbiller, who credited his research to Reading historians Charlie Adams and George Mesier IX. He was quickly arrested for public drunkenness and sent to the old Berks County Prison. There, he said he was 37, and gave his name as either James or William Penn, the records aren’t clear. Guards noted him as 5-foot-11 and 159 pounds, with sandy brown hair. He spoke in a slight, unidentifiable accent and listed his trade as “saddler.”
Released days later, he was rearrested a few nights after that burglarizing a boardinghouse (a chambermaid who awakened in the night spotted Willie’s feet as he scurried under a bed). Police found a gold watch, a razor, and purse in his pockets. None his.
Back in prison, Stoneman Willie shaped his handkerchief into a noose and looped it around the cell door. He survived only when the garment tore. Soon, he suffered acute alcohol withdrawal. He languished over a month before dying in jail of kidney failure.
When no next of kin could be found, his body was released to the Auman funeral home. At the time, embalming was still a relatively new practice. Theo Auman was sure he had a better formula than the commonly used arsenic — one he found for preserving meat in a Philly bookshop.
The chemicals he used exploded Stoneman Willie’s tissue. Within days, he began to mummify.
“The formula was just too high octane, and certainly nothing we’d use today,” Blankenbiller said.
Auman kept the mummified remains at the funeral home.
“He was curious about how long the body would remain preserved in that condition,” Blankenbiller said.
Word got out. The press ran with the story (“Like Egyptian Mummy,” read one Reading Times headline from 1900). Soon, the mummy had his nickname.
Scant details were gleaned from Stoneman Willie’s cellmate. He told authorities Stoneman Willie had confided to him that he gave a fake name to protect his family name. He did not want to embarrass his well-to-do father back in Ireland, or his wealthy siblings living in New York, the cellmate said.
Still, newspapers settled on a series of possible matches. A Polish nobleman. A murderer. A Reading barfly. All were false leads.
More than anything, people in Reading wanted to see the mummy.
Auman didn’t advertise the mummy, Blankenbiller said. But Willie’s lid was always kept open.
Soon, Reading parents told ghost stories to their children about Stoneman Willie, his mouth agape, his hollow eyes, his clasped hands. Mourners peeped in for a look. Sunday School teachers rang the doorbell.
“Can you imagine if you were at school one day and you went home and told your parents you went to a funeral home and saw a mummy?” Blankenbiller said.
In more recent years, the funeral home ran a hair analysis to obtain DNA, but nothing was conclusive. National experts did tests, but couldn’t find an answer. They did find 20 coins, lodged in Stoneman Willie’s throat, dating to the early 1900s, and theorized that visitors dropped them in Willie’s mouth as coins for the dead.
“Like the River Styx,” said Blankenbiller.
For his part, Blankenbiller was determined to find Stoneman Willie’s real name before burying him. Earlier this year, he located and visited the grave of the last possible match. He was certain he knew who Willie really was.
Though they’re keeping the name secret for now, Blankenbiller said that the cellmate was right all along. Stoneman Willie was an Irish immigrant worried about disgracing the family name. So he went a century in death without one.
“It was shame,” Blankenbiller said.
For now, the mummy rests in an upstairs room, Stoneman Willie for just a little while longer.
“We hate to see him go, but it’s time this poor guy had his day of rest,” Blankenbiller said.