The News-Herald. [volume] (Hillsboro, Highland Co., Ohio) 1886-1973, 1892-02-25
JESSE JAMES BRAIN.
Secretly Removed in a Very Skill.
full Manner.
How the Doctors Outwitted tho Dead
Dcspcrado's watchful Mother
and Loft No Traces of
Their Work.

and Loft No Traces OF
Their Work.
"a great many things have been
written about Jesse James, and at
times it has seemed to me as if the pa
pcrs were taxing their readers severely
with their tirclcss efforts to preserve q
strained interest in the career of the
great highwayman," said a prominent
citizen of northwest Missouri to St.
Louis GlobeDemocrat reporter the
other day. "a certain little post-orbit
incident has never found it's way into
the press, however, and the reason, no
doubt, is that it has been kept an invio-
late secret among the few who were
given an opportunity to know about it,
for fear of bringing trouble on those
who were responsible for it. The facts
are simply these: While Mrs. Sanuels,
the mother of Jesse James, was watch
ing like lynx every incident connect
ed with the arrangements for convey
ing the dead desperate from st. Joseph
the day after his death to her farm
near Kearney, where he was to be bur-
led, number of enterprising physi-
clans quietly removed his brain and put
it in jar of alcohol, in which condition
it is now exhibited, labeled or unla-
beled, at one of the st. Joseph medical
colleges.
"As soon as heard of the shooting of
Jesse James," continued the narrator,
Il boarded train and went to St.
Joseph. The excitement was some
thing remarkable. The town was full
of witnesses, officers and idlers from
Kansas City, Omaha and from towns
two hundred and three hundred miles
away, all bent on seeing the great
highwayman and the house in which he
was shot. One of the first persons on
hand was Mrs. Samuels, Jesse's mother.
You know she is a woman from whom
the boys inherited much of their
aggrcssiveness. She is general in
petticoats. Nothing escapes her and
she is everywhere at the same time.
The sheriff from Kansas City, think
his name was Timberlake-was to her
special object Of aversion, and it was
probably due to this antipathy, which
to certain extent compelled her to rely
with more confidence upon the st.
Joseph authorities, that the doctors
owed their golden opportunity to per-
form the operation that sent the high
wayman brainless to his grave.
Kansas City was green with envy that
st. Joseph should have obtained the
notoriety of Jesse James fatal taking
off, and Timberlake was anxious to
save as much for his town as he could
by giving orders to have the body sent
there for Identification, so Us to make
business for the Kansas City hotels and
draw crowds of curious people from st.
Joseph. Mrs. Samuels did not quite
see 1t in that light, nor did she COM
prehend Undertakes motive. To her
his arbitrary orders appeared in the light
of a malignant persecution of her son
even after death, and she set herself to
watch and thwart him at every turn.
The St. Joseph authorities were just as
anxious to prolong the attending scenes
to their full capacity of profit in their
own town, and for this reason naturally
acted in complete accord and sympathy
with the anguished old lady. While she
was watching the movements of the
Kansas City crowd to guard against sur
prises the chief of police of st. Joseph
had her permission to prepare the body
for removal. One thing, however, that
the old lady was particularly set on
was that no post-mortem examination
should be made, and this the police au-
thoritics promised in good faith. Just
how those dostors managed it is more
than l can say, but there in a jar on a
shelf, in a glass Office case, was the
bandits brain, the spot where the bull
LOT 4, oI hnt CT IN Itch,
able by the suffusion of blood.
'The doctor who pointed it out to me
was q personal friend" the gentleman
went on, land he laughed slyly when
asked him how he had accomplished it.
He invited me to go with him where
Jesse lay dead in his coffin, and as l
looked at his face cndeavored to dis
cover the marks of the scapel, but in
vain. When we were out of the room,
! asked him how the brain was re-
moved without leaving trace of the
knife, and he then told me that the
| scalp had been cut across the back part
of the head and drawn forward over
the brow, leaving the skull exposed to
the action OF the saw. The top of the
skull was carefully sawed and the
brain was removed. The scalp was
then drawn back into its place over the
cap of the skull, and when Mrs. Sam
uels next gazed upon the pale face Of
her son his appearance was not altered
in the least, but his brain was in a
| glass jar. That is now nearly ten
! years ago. l never again heard my
friend, the doctor, refer to the matter,
nor has any other person ever spoken
of it to me, which shows how jealously
| tho Socraf hoe baaD lyopt